IMHO the best 20th century novel in the English language: Brideshead Revisited. A cursory reading, or viewing of the TV series or recent film, can leave the mis

IMHO the best 20th century novel in the English language: Brideshead Revisited. A cursory reading, or viewing of the TV series or recent film, can leave the misleading impression that it's a eulogy to aristocratic privilege. But that's because it wears its more profound themes so lightly. Those themes are life, love, the quest for happiness & acceptance, the nature of art, and the Catholic faith. As a work of apologetics it's extremely reticent; only Catholics will notice its Catholicity. All should read at a gentle pace to savour its wisdom. Some quotes... “But I was in search of love in those days, and I went full of curiosity and the faint, unrecognized apprehension that here, at last, I should find that low door in the wall, which others, I knew, had found before me, which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden, which was somewhere, not overlooked by any window, in the heart of that grey city.” “To understand all is to forgive all.” “... To know and love one other human being is the root of all wisdom.” “Oxford, in those days, was still a city of aquatint. In her spacious and quiet streets men walked and spoke as they had done in Newman's day; her autumnal mists, her grey springtime, and the rare glory of her summer days - such as that day - when the chestnut was in flower and the bells rang out high and clear over her gables and cupolas, exhaled the soft airs of centuries of youth. It was this cloistral hush which gave our laughter its resonance, and carried it still, joyously, over the intervening clamour.” And finally: "beware charm!"