Waugh Character in List of Oxford Notables

The Oxford Royale Academy, which offers summer school and other college preparatory instruction, has published in its promotional materials a list of 8 of the most famous Oxford literary characters. Included on the list is Sebastian Flyte:

In reality, Oxford is full of a whole variety of different types of people. In fiction, though, it’s disproportionately attractive but somewhat dissolute noblemen. The archetype of these is Sebastian Flyte, one of the main characters in Evelyn Waugh’s famous eulogy to interwar Britain, Brideshead Revisited …Waugh wrote Brideshead Revisited during the privations of the Second World War, and the book is infused with nostalgia for pre-war food, society and behaviour, which Sebastian Flyte, with his aristocratic background, wealth and taste for sensuality, embodies perfectly. Brideshead Revisited has come to inform many people’s beliefs about what Oxford is really like; if they don’t believe in the petty grudges solved by crossbow in the Inspector Morse novels, then they might well believe in the endless summer of champagne and strawberries that undergraduate life is made out to be in Brideshead Revisited.

Others on the list include, as noted in the quote, Inspector Morse from Colin Dexter’s novels and the long running ITV series, as well as Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane from the novels of Dorothy Sayers and The White Rabbit from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

 

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