It is 1943 and Captain Charles Ryder of the British Army is organizing his troops to move out to an undisclosed location. Ryder is a man with little enthusiasm for his mission or his life in general and does not even question the destination toward which he and his men now mobilize. An overnight train trip from Scotland positions Ryder and his men in England and at a location which Charles had visited twenty years before. The troops are to set up camp near an estate called Brideshead Castle and Charles is roused from his boredom by the recollection of his years as an undergraduate at Oxford where he spent the formative days of his youth infatuated by a fellow student, Sebastian, and fascinated by his aristocratic English family.