TV CLASSIC REVISITED
Stately home celebrates anniversary after pandemic put paid to Brideshead Revisited festival last year
This year marks an anniversary for Castle Howard, as it was 40 years ago that Granada Television’s adaptation of the novel Brideshead Revisited hit the screen. Pictured from the series are Anthony Andrews, Diana Quick and Jeremy Irons.
IT was on a Friday afternoon last June, as the heavens opened and drenched the stately lawns of Castle Howard, that Victoria Barnsley wondered if there might after all have been some divine intervention.
It should have been the opening day of the festival she had been planning for months, the first anywhere devoted to a single work of fiction. It was the book that had put her home on the world map, and guests from almost every part of the planet had been expected to pay homage to it.
In the event, the 75th anniversary of the publication of Evelyn Waugh’s masterpiece, Brideshead Revisited, passed almost unnoticed. The festival was just another victim of the global lockdown.
“I had never felt more conflicted,” said Ms Barnsley, a publisher by profession, who runs the estate in the Howardian Hills of North Yorkshire with her husband, Nicholas Howard.
“It poured with rain all that weekend,” she said. “And my sadness that the festival didn’t happen was mixed with relief because Brideshead in the rain wasn’t the idea. It was all going to be picnics and punting on lakes.”
This year marks perhaps an even more significant anniversary for the house, home to the Howard family for three centuries, as it was 40 years ago that Granada Television’s monumental adaptation of the novel hit the screen.
It was filmed in large measure at Castle Howard – apparently Waugh’s inspiration for the fictional Brideshead Castle – and its phenomenal success in Britain, the US and beyond placed the house indelibly on the world tourism stage.
Ms Barnsley had considered reviving the festival for this summer, but the uncertainty over international tourism made it impractical.
“I don’t know whether we’ll ever resurrect the idea now. It feels as if its time has come and gone,” she said.
“It’s so sad. We were going to have glamping in the walled garden and Sebastian Flyte’s teddy bears’ picnic.
“As far as I know, no-one has done a festival around a single book or a single author. But it was a huge amount of work and the logistics in such a rural location were also challenging.
“We might revisit bits of it – the teddy bears’ picnic on its own could be a lovely thing to do. But there will be a perennial interest in Castle Howard because of Brideshead. There’s even a new BBC adaptation rumoured to be in the works.”
The original 1981 filming had been a watershed moment for Castle Howard. Nicholas Howard’s father, George, was ironically chairman of the BBC when he allowed ITV to film there, and the location fees helped pay for its restoration.
The magnificent dome, which had collapsed into the Great Hall when fire engulfed it in 1940, had been rebuilt in the early 1960s but Granada’s cash bankrolled the reconstruction of the Garden Hall, which was then just a shell.
“The new library was also built on the proceeds of it – another room that was just a shell from the fire and the Second World War,” Ms Barnsley said.
“And of course, the huge international success began to have a serious impact on the number of visitors. It put Castle Howard firmly on the map.”
But despite the popularity of Anthony Andrews and his costars, Jeremy Irons and Diana Quick, the real star of the series was the castle itself.
“In a way, the building is the main character and as a result people tend to think of the book being set in Yorkshire,” Ms Barnsley said.
It was all going to be picnics and punting on lakes. Victoria Barnsley, who runs the Castle Howard estate, on last year’s cancelled festival.