Captain Charles Ryder returns to the country estate of Brideshead. There he indulges in a sentimental journey that takes him back twenty years to his schoolmates at Oxford and to his seduction by the Marchmains.

Mr. Joyboy, an embalmer, and Aimee Thanatogenos, crematorium cosmetician, find their romance complicated by the appearance of a young English poet.

Spans three decades from the early twenties to World War II in Charles Ryder's relationship with the wild and eccentric Sebastian Flyte and the aristocratic Marchmain family.