Brideshead Revisited is the story of Charles Ryder, an Oxford history student befriended by Lord Sebastian Flyte. Flyte is the wealthy scion of the declining Marchmain family, once a powerful member of the British peerage. Charles flirts with the life of a nobleman, creating problems for himself and the Marchmains when he dallies with Sebastian's younger sister, Julia. The novel dwells on Roman Catholicism, class, nostalgia, and the history of the peerage.