I don't think that you read too closely either the novel or my post. In the case of the novel, the conversion to Catholicism did not come until the end. In the first chapters of the novel, the hijinks of Sebastien Flyte and his friends are depicted, which were not too different from those of the late count and his friends at Oxford. In any case, the count and his friends would not have actually had to read the book, when they could have watched the television production that was first broadcast in Britain in the early 1980s. And the TV production certainly depicted in some detail the antics of Sebastien and his friends at Oxford. BTW the script for the television production was written by the noted British barrister and writer, John Mortimer. Jim F. -- "C. G. Estabrook" wrote: It sounds as though the count didn't need any inspiration from Waugh, who would not I think be on his reading list. Brideshead is in fact an account of a conversion to Catholicism. --CGE Jim Farmelant wrote: > As I recall the antics of the late Count von Bismarck and > his friends at Oxford back in the early 1980s were often > compared to those described by Evelyn Waugh in his > novels, Decline and Fall, and his Brideshead Revisted. > And since that was the period that the television production > of Brideshead Revisited was first broadcast, the antics > of the late count and his friends were probably more or less directly > inspired by Waugh. > > Jim F. > > On Sun, 8 Jul 2007 10:21:54 -0400 Doug Henwood > writes: >> [Meant to send this out the other day, after Gawker wrote it up...] >> >> Telegraph (London) - July 7, 2007 >> > >> news/2007/07/04/db0402.xml> >> >> Count Gottfried von Bismarck >> ... ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk