Prologue Summary

Brideshead Revisited is the chronicle of a man named Charles Ryder and his association with an aristocratic English family over the period of about twenty years in the time period spanning World War I and World War II.

As the novel begins Captain Charles Ryder of the British Army is organizing his troops to move out to an undisclosed location. It is 1943 and Ryder is a man with little enthusiasm for his mission or his life in general and does not even question the destination toward which he and his men now mobilize. An overnight train trip from Scotland positions Ryder and his men in England and at a location which Charles has visited before. The troops are to set up camp near an estate called Brideshead Castle and Charles is roused from his ennui by the recollection of having been here before...