Merry #ThursdayBooksandBeer, Xmas edition! I’m reading this fascinating biography of Evelyn Waugh by Paula Byrne, which draws on his relationship with Hugh Lygon and his family and their home Madresfield and posits them as the inspiration for Brideshead Revisited. I’m drinking a Petrus Dubbel from Brouwerij De Brabandere for an appropriately festive Belgian treat (and the monk on the label has Santa Claus vibes). “Once he had an agent and a critically acclaimed novel to his name, Evelyn was keen to present himself as the voice of the young generation.” #reading #literature #biography #EvelynWaugh #BridesheadRevisited #craftbeer #belgianbeer

For this week’s #ThursdayBooksandBeer I’m preparing for teaching Evelyn Waugh’s masterpiece Brideshead Revisited to my Year 12 Literature class next year. I’ve enjoyed the Waugh novels I’ve read before but somehow never got onto this one before now. The Deftones wouldn’t make it into the soundtrack for a film adaptation, but the beer match is called Imperial Phantom *Bride* and it’s a delicious imperial IPA, so that’s close enough for me. “‘I have been here before,’ I said; I had been there before; first with Sebastian more than twenty years ago on a cloudless day in June, when the ditches were creamy with meadowsweet and the air heavy with all the scents of summer; it was a day of peculiar splendour, and though I had been there so often, in so many moods, it was to that first visit that my heart returned on this, my latest.” #reading #literature #bridesheadrevisited #classic #craftbeer

Cut from a different cloth: don’t be fooled by fashion’s obsession with upper-class wardrobes https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/article/2024/jun/26/cut-from-a-different-cloth-dont-be-fooled-by-fashions-obsession-with-upper-class-wardrobes #BridesheadRevisited #TheMitfordsisters #Lifeandstyle #Aristocracy #Fashion #Society #UKnews #Erdem

Having recently watched #PeakyBlinders (which in retrospect was a bit of a waste of time, it is much too drawn-out, I should have skipped lots of episodes and just read summaries from Wikipedia instead), it is interesting to realise that #BridesheadRevisited takes place in almost exactly the same timeframe, in the same country. Still the lives depicted in these two series could not be more different.