During World War Two, being in England and commanding a company, which does not partake in the fighting, Captain Charles Ryder is ordered to lead the platoons to a new location. After arriving, he discovers that it is the Brideshead estate, with which he used to be closely linked in his youth. He is carried back, in memory, to his college days. When Charles started at Oxford University, his father and Cousin Jasper advised him to only keep company with a certain type of people; the type who wear tweed, always study, know the best lecturers, et cetera. Charles does this for the first year, but then in his third term, he met Sebastian Flyte, a son of an aristocratic family, Marchmain. Charles is immediately captivated and the young men became friends, spending the entire first year of study in friendly company combined with frivolous and debaucherous antics. During the first summer vacation Ryder lived in his father's house in London, then, having received Sebastian’s telegram with the message that his friend is "Gravely injured. Come at once.", he rushed to him and found him in Brideshead, the Marchmain’s family homestead, having broken a bone in his foot so small it doesn't even have a name.
After Sebastian’s recovery, the pair go to Venice, where Sebastian's father is presently living with Cara, his mistress. Sebastian’s father, Lord Marchmain, has lived separately from his wife for a long period of time, Sebastian’s mother, and the man hated her, although the reason for this hatred was difficult to explain. Sebastian had difficult relations with the mother as well. She was a very devout Catholic, and because of his own struggles with his faith Sebastian found it difficult to get along with her, as well as an own older brother Brideshead and his two sisters, Julia and Cordelia, all Catholic; though Julia not as much as Bridey and Cordelia. Back in Oxford, the young men felt that their life is lacking fun and the former ease which they had enjoyed. They spent much time sitting together over a bottle of wine, and it is at this point in the book that Sebastian's life starts to go downhill. One day, at Julia’s and Rex Mottrem’s behest, they went for a holiday to London. After the ball, pretty drunk, Sebastian got into his car and was stopped by police officers who, without further ado, sent him and his friends to prison for the night. From there, he was rescued by Rex, who is a rather arrogant and tenacious person.
At the University over Sebastian was established a painful tutelage of Catholic priests and teachers, followed by periodic arrivals of Lady Marchmain. He started drinking and was expelled from Oxford. Ryder, whose presence in the university without the other has lost all the meaning, also dropped out of it, decided to become a painter, and went to Paris.
At Christmas week Charles came to Brideshead, where all members of the family had already gathered, including Sebastian, having committed with Mr. Samgrassom a tour around the Middle East. As it turned out later Sebastian ran away from his escort to Constantinople, lived there with a friend and was drinking all the time. By this time he had already turned into a real alcoholic, who hardly could be helped. The distressed family requested Rex to take Sebastian to Zurich resort to the doctor. After an incident, when Charles provided his friend, who was without a penny and was also strictly limited in alcohol consumption, with two pounds for a drink in the nearest pub, Charles had to leave Brideshead and to return to Paris. Soon there also arrived Rex in search of Sebastian, who on his way to Zurich ran away from him, taking with him three hundred pounds. On the same day, Rex invited Charles to a restaurant where he told enthusiastically about his plans to marry Julia and get her dowry.
A few months later, the pair married, but very modestly, without the royal family and the Prime Minister, who Rex had known and had counted on. It was like a "secret wedding", and only a few years later, Charles learned what there really happened. Thoughts of Captain Ryder switch to Julia, who played so far only sporadically and a rather mysterious role in the drama of Sebastian, and subsequently played a huge role in Charles’s life. She was very beautiful, but she could not count on the brilliant aristocratic party due to the fact that their noble family bore the stamp of immoral behavior of her father, and because of the fact that she was a Catholic. It happened so that fate brought her to Rex, a native of Canada, making it into the top of financial and political circles in London. He mistakenly assumed that such a party would be a trump card in his meteoric career, and used all his charms to capture Julia. She was really in love with him, and wedding date had been appointed and the most important cathedral had been rented, even the Cardinals were invited, when suddenly it turned out that Rex was divorced. Shortly before he took for Julia the Catholic faith as a Catholic now had no right to marry a second time when his first wife was alive. They burst into a storm of controversy in the family and among the holy fathers. In their midst, Rex said that they prefer a wedding of Protestant canons.
After several years of marriage, the love between them petered out; Julia opened the true essence of her husband: he was not a man in the fullest sense of the word, but "a small part of a person pretending to be a whole human being." He was obsessed with money and politics. In 1926, during a general strike, Charles returned to London, where he learned that Lady Marchmain was near death. In this regard, at the request of Julia, he went to Algeria for Sebastian, where he had settled for a long time. At that time he was in the hospital and was recovering from the flu, so could not ride to London. Even after his illness, he did not want to leave because he did not want to leave one of his new friends, German Kurt, with a sore foot, who he picked up in Tangier dying of hunger, and was taking care of him now. He was not able to do away with alcoholism.
Returning to London Charles learned that London house of Marchmains was to be sold because of financial difficulties, it would be taken down and an apartment house in its place would be built. Charles, having already become an architectural painter, at the request of Brideshead, had painted the interior of the house. He successfully survived the financial crisis of those years due to his specialization, had published three albums of his luxurious reproductions depicting British mansions and estates, Charles went to Latin America for a change in work. There he stayed for two years and created a series of beautiful pictures, rich with tropical colors and exotic motifs. From England to New York his wife came after him by appointment, and they together departed on the boat back to Europe.
During the trip, it turned out that Julia Marchmain floated with them back to England. Yielding to passion she came to America after the man who she thought she loved. Quickly disappointed in him, she decided to return home. On the boat during the storm, which contributed to the fact that Julia and Charles were constantly with each other alone, for they were the only ones who did not suffer from seasickness, they realized that they loved each other. After the exhibition, immediately organized in London and had a huge success, Charles told his wife that he would no longer live with her, but she was not very disappointed, and soon acquired a new admirer. Charles filed for divorce. Julia did the same. They lived together in Brideshead for two and a half years and were planning a wedding.
Julia’s older brother married Beryl, an admiral’s widow and a mother of three children, a stout lady of forty-five, who was rather disliked by Lord Marchmain, who returned home due to the outbreak of hostilities outside of England. In this regard, Beryl and her husband were unable to move there. Cordelia, Julia’s younger sister, who Charles had not seen for fifteen years, returned to Brideshead. She worked as a nurse in Spain but had to come back. On the way home, she visited Sebastian, who moved to Tunisia, had converted to the faith and now worked at a monastery as a servant. He still suffered a lot, because he was deprived of dignity and freedom. Cordelia even saw in him something of a saint.
Lord Marchmain came home much older and terminally ill. Before his death, between Julia and Charles happened a clash over the fact whether or not her father was to be disturbed with the last sacrament. Charles as an agnostic did not see any sense in it and was against it. However, before his death, Lord Marchmain admitted his sins and crossed himself. Julia has long suffered that first lived in sin with Rex, and now consciously was going to repeat the same with Charles, she chose to return to the bosom of the Catholic Church, and to part with her beloved. Now thirty-year-old captain of infantry Charles Ryder, standing in the chapel of Brideshead and looking at the burning of the altar candle, considered this flame something very meaningful that burnt in the hearts of today's soldiers were far away from their homes as it was flaming in the souls of the ancient knights.
