The story of the Marchmain family. Aristocratic, beautiful and charming, the Marchmains are indeed a symbol of England and her decline in this novel of the upper class of the 1920s and the abdication of responsibility in the 1930s. Brideshead Revisited is now so widely acclaimed that it is hard to believe that it was not always so. Yet the fact is that both book and author were heavily criticized at the time of its first publication in 1945. How was it that such an enduring favorite should have met with such a hostile reception?