Nige on target ...

... as usual: Art, etc.

Nige asks: "The forthcoming movie of Brideshead Revisited - do we need this? The fondly remembered TV series was actually turgid stuff, far too long and literal. Come to that, is the book that good?"

I suspect we won't need the movie, if only because novels are best made into mini-series. As to whether the series was all that good, I managde somehow not to see it, so I can't say. Maybe I'll check it out.
The novel, I think, is wonderful, but I am not bothered - as many English readers seem to be (though not Pundy) - by what is a taken to be its focus on class. I didn't even notice it. At the time I first read it, it struck me as perhaps the saddest book I had ever read and that its sadness was the sadness that comes from being human.