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Some years ago I prepared for my students a chronology of events in Brideshead Revisited, and until articles by Kurt Schleuter1 and John W. Osborne2 appeared in EWN I thought I had worked out all the important details. But re-reading the novel in light of their findings shows that matters are more complicated, even tangled, than any of us had thought.
Some dates are easy to assign because Waugh gives them or because he alludes to historical events. Some can be arrived at by triangulation. One contradicts all the other evidence.
In the chronology which follows, I shall give the page references containing significant evidence (citing the Little, Brown Brideshead) and a minimum of commentary.
1866 Lord Marchmain born (p. 332: 73 in 1939. See Osborne)
1900 Lord Brideshead born (p. 91: 3 years older than Sebastian)
1903 Charles born in October (p. 148); Sebastian Flyte born
1905 Julia Flyte born (p. 179: "just 18," summer 1923) (and, p. 238, was 19 at beginning of 1925)
1911 Cordelia Flyte born (p. 219: 15 in 1926)
191? Charles Ryder's mother killed in war; date unspecified
1918 Lord Marchmain refuses to return to his wife at end of war (p. 55)
1922 Autumn: Charles (college unspecified) and Sebastian (Christ Church) matriculate at Oxford shortly before Charles's 19th birthday (p. 24)
1923 March: Meets Sebastian (p. 29)
Easter: trip to Ravenna with Collins
May?-June?: first visit to Brideshead (dated by Eights Week)
August: idyll at Brideshead; Julia meets Rex Mottram at Cap Ferrat
September: trip to Venice and Lord Marchmain (p. 94; month of idyll at an end)