Charles Ryder’s life becomes irrevocably altered when he enters the orbit of the aristocratic Marchmain family and their ancestral estate, Brideshead. The narrative follows Charles as he navigates his complex, evolving relationship with the family’s youngest son, Sebastian Flyte, and later with his sister, Julia. Set against the backdrop of the interwar period and the encroaching shadow of World War II, the story examines the tension between secular desires and the pull of Catholic faith. The novel is structured as a reflective, non-linear memoir, with the narrator looking back from the austerity of the 1940s to the opulent, vanished world of his youth.

Discussion often centers on the novel’s shift from Waugh’s earlier satirical style toward a more lyrical and elegiac tone. Readers frequently highlight the atmospheric quality of the prose, which captures the sensory details of a bygone era with precision. Critics often debate the effectiveness of the religious themes, noting how they serve as the central pivot for the characters' moral development. The balance between the nostalgic portrayal of the Marchmain family and the somber reality of the narrator’s later life remains a frequent point of analysis. Many readers find the work to be a significant study of the intersection between personal identity and inherited tradition.