Now I confess to being a Waugh fan. I've read most of his books and his letters with Nancy Mitford. I can't see what she's getting at. She complains about it being "too Catholic" or words to that effect. Of course it is concerned with Catholicism. That's what is at the heart of the problems of most of the characters. It's what is at the bottom of Sebastian's alcoholism (if something has to be the cause of alcoholism apart from alcohol itself) and at the centre of the rest of the family's troubles. I think she expects it to be funny because Decline & Fall was funny. And she expects it to have a conclusive ending. Well it does in a way, with the father's return to Brideshead to die. But it is a book about a long sad decline among a family, to which the book's storyteller, Charles Ryder, is an observer and sometime participant. Maybe she should settle for the brilliant TV series made in the 1980s, which I've had pleasure in viewing maybe three times (and will likely view again some time), whereas I've probably only read the book once.
