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Brideshead Revisited
- Narrated by: Jeremy Irons
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged Audiobook
- Categories: Literature & Fiction, Classics
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Summary
The wellsprings of desire and the impediments to love come brilliantly into focus in Evelyn Waugh's masterpiece - a novel that immerses us in the glittering and seductive world of English aristocracy in the waning days of the empire.
Through the story of Charles Ryder's entanglement with the Flytes, a great Catholic family, Evelyn Waugh charts the passing of the privileged world he knew in his own youth and vividly recalls the sensuous pleasures denied him by wartime austerities.
At once romantic, sensuous, comic, and somber, Brideshead Revisited transcends Waugh's early satiric explorations and reveals him to be an elegiac, lyrical novelist of the utmost feeling and lucidity.
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Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Jytte
- 17-09-16
A total delight
No one reads as beautifully as Jeremy Irons. His voice is mesmerising! You recall the splendour of the BBC production, so long ago!
17 people found this helpful
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- Benita
- 24-10-16
Brideshead revisited
I wish there were more read by Jeremy Irons. Such a relaxing voice. The story was a fabulous insight into the life of this family of the upper class during the decades between wars. I thoroughly enjoyed listening.
10 people found this helpful
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- Dr P F Ridgway
- 26-06-18
Exquisite
Simply the definitive audiobook of Waugh’s finest work. Irons’ nuanced performance transports the reader to the time, place and drama of each chapter. It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve read or listened to it, curl up on the couch with a warm red and settle down to hours of enjoyment.
8 people found this helpful
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- liz
- 30-08-16
Wonderful listening
This is a superbly executed reading of a magnificent story . Jeremy Irons delivery is faultless in my opinion and the writing is rich and full of extraordinary insight and beautiful language . One to return to many times over ..it never fails to lift the spirits ..
5 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 31-05-18
Superb narration, wonderful story.
Irons narrates this perfectly, and it conjours his role as Charles Ryder in the televised series. Such a powerful paring: Waugh read by Irons - this is an essential download for anyone who appreciates great 20th Century English literature.
4 people found this helpful
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- Mrs. H. L. Rider
- 21-07-16
Breathtaking
A gentle story of days longs past described with languid pace and charisma. The tale gently weaves around itself adding layers of colour. The perfect book for summer. Irons recaptures the atmosphere and grandeur of the Televised series with his performance of this work. Couldn't be more perfect!
4 people found this helpful
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- Hannah
- 18-06-16
This is outstanding.
Jeremy Irons is simply brilliant in how he brings life to all the characters.
3 people found this helpful
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- SGeraghty
- 24-05-16
Beautiful and moving novel, beautifully told
Jeremy Irons and his wonderful, elegant and gracefully modulated delivery gives sympathy, pathos and realism to this wonderful and important novel.
3 people found this helpful
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- Button Shiner
- 16-05-18
Marvelous
Revisiting this myself (geddit) for the third or fourth time I loved this as an audio book. Jeremy Irons does a 'banging' job.
2 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 10-07-16
Wonderful story excellently read
A fantastic story of one man's relationship with the different individuals in a family, and how God's grace works through the most messy and complicated of situations. Wonderful dialogues. Jeremy Irons does a great job of acting out all the characters.
5 people found this helpful
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- Jean
- 07-08-16
Absolutely brilliant!
I have seen the movie so many times and have always wanted to read the book, but could never find the time. The audio version was a real gift, and just couldn't wait to get opportunities for long periods of listening on the go.
The story is completly absorbing, the language so beautiful - like a priceless tapestry, but Jeremy Irons narration was totally GENIUS!
1 person found this helpful
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- Glen Turner
- 03-03-21
A beautiful story beautifully read
This story left me breathless on more than one occasion with its beauty of language, its richness of metaphor, its sharpness of insight into character.
Jeremy Irons reading was sonorous and he characterised each person so well.
I also enjoyed listening to the corresponding episodes of The Circe Institute's podcast Close Reads for discussions that have me now insight and stimulated my thinking on the book.
I'm so glad I read this.
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- Amazon Customer
- 23-12-20
Outstanding Performance of One of the Great Novels
Brideshead Revisited is Evelyn Waugh's masterpiece, and Jeremy Irons - who made his name as Charles Ryder in a British TV adaptation of the book in the early 1980s - is a superb narrator. The book has been described variously as a lament for a lost civilization and a exploration of the operation of Divine Grace in the world. It's both of those things, and more. What it is most, though, is one of the greatest of writers in English at the very top of his form, and that writing given full justice by one of the great voices of his generation.
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- Julian
- 19-01-18
My theme is memory
What a coup for the BBC to snare Jeremy Irons, star of the 1981 TV adaptation, to revisit his role as the protagonist and narrator of Waugh's wartime masterpiece. The scenes from that incomparable drama floated through my head as he read, bringing all the magical cast back to life (Olivier, Gielgud, Claire Bloom, Jane Asher, John LeMesurier et al, like some 70s thespian super-group), not to mention the music... I can't possibly be objective about the novel itself, it is inextricably bound up with my adolescence (I first read it when the TV version was being shown) and is one of the main reasons that drew my wife and me together (we named our third son Charles Sebastian). I'd forgotten how funny it was, though, Rex's failed Catholic conversion and Antony Blanche's appearances being the comic highlights. I gave Irons' narration only four stars though because a couple of the accents jarred a bit (mostly Rex's, I'm glad Waugh didn't make him Australian), but overall he handles the large cast with aplomb (he must have picked up a lot from all those knights and dames back in the 80s). It was a treat from first to last though, I look forward to listening again in a few more years, no doubt it will resonate even more with age.
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- M. E. Donnelly
- 21-08-17
Wow!
Brideshead has been recommended to me for 37 years. Now I know what all the fuss is about.