Brideshead Revisited: Booktrack Edition characters

Appears from the start

An army officer and architectural painter who narrates the story. During an uninspiring posting in the Second World War, his unit is moved to a country house he recognizes as Brideshead, prompting him to remember the family and faith that shaped his adult life.

Appears from the start

A young officer serving under Charles. Practical, earnest, and culturally incurious, Hooper represents the new social order that the army and postwar Britain seem likely to produce.

First appears in chapter 2

The charming younger son of the Flyte family, whom Charles meets at Oxford. Sebastian is beautiful, playful, and determined to keep adult claims at a distance; he carries a teddy bear named Aloysius and introduces Charles to a world of beauty, privilege, and Catholic family tension.

First appears in chapter 2

An Oxford aesthete whose theatrical speech, social perception, and deliberate provocations make him both entertaining and unsettling. He recognizes the dangers within Sebastian's family life earlier than Charles does.

First appears in chapter 3

Sebastian's poised and striking sister. Charles first sees her as part of the almost enchanted world surrounding Brideshead, although her resemblance to Sebastian gives her a distinct place in his imagination.

Also known as Bridey

First appears in chapter 3

Sebastian's serious elder brother and heir to the Marquess of Marchmain. Awkward, literal, and devoutly Catholic, he is largely untouched by the charm and social ease associated with the rest of his family.

First appears in chapter 3

The youngest Flyte child, plain-spoken, observant, and secure in her Catholic faith. Still a girl when Charles first visits Brideshead, she treats the family's religion as an ordinary and living fact rather than an abstraction.

First appears in chapter 3

The devout Catholic matriarch of the Flyte family. She is calm, intelligent, and accustomed to exercising moral authority over her children, though Sebastian experiences her concern as a pressure from which he wants to escape.

First appears in chapter 3

The estranged head of the Flyte family, who left his wife and England after the First World War and lives in Venice with his mistress, Cara. His absence and rejection of Catholic family life hang over Brideshead long before Charles meets him.

First appears in chapter 3

An elderly servant who nursed the Flyte children and still lives in rooms high in Brideshead. Sebastian takes Charles to visit her, making her one of his first links to the family's shared childhood.

First appears in chapter 4

Lord Marchmain's Italian mistress and companion in Venice. Warm and perceptive, she speaks candidly to Charles about the Flytes and about the burdens love and religion can place on a family.

First appears in chapter 5

An ambitious Canadian businessman and politician who courts Julia. He is energetic, socially adaptable, and eager to acquire the standing attached to the Flyte family, but he does not understand the religious commitments that limit what Julia can do.

First appears in chapter 5

An Oxford don and associate of Lady Marchmain who is entrusted with accompanying Sebastian abroad. Charles distrusts his cultivated manner and his willingness to act as an agent of the family's supervision.

First appears in chapter 7

Charles's socially accomplished wife and the mother of his children. She is skilled at advancing his career and presenting their marriage as a success, though the intimacy between them has faded by the time they travel home from America.

First appears in chapter 11

A priest called to Brideshead when Lord Marchmain is dying. His presence turns the family's private disagreement about faith into an immediate question about whether the old man will accept the Church's final rites.