Waugh's most successful novel portrays a figure (and English landscape painter), in some ways not unlike himself, who undergoes a spiritual journey from his college days, viewed in retrospect from the vantage point of his role as an officer in the homeland guard at the height of the Second World War in Britain. The novel was twice adapted to the cinema, first in a BBC mini series, starring Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews, and again, somewhat less successfully, in 2008 as a feature film.