Archie Revisited

“If it could only be like this always—always summer, always alone, the fruit always ripe and Aloysius in a good temper …” So says Sebastian Flyte of his teddy bear, one of the most memorable minor characters in Brideshead Revisited. Both affectation and security totem, Aloysius (played in the iconic ITV miniseries by one Delicatessen) was modeled on a real toy: Archibald Ormsby-Gore, who belonged to Evelyn Waugh’s Oxford friend John Betjeman.

And while Aloysius may be Archibald’s most famous literary representation, it’s not the only one: in the 1940s, Betjeman wrote a book for his children, titled Archie and the Strict Baptists. (The main character, a practicing Baptist, is a keen amateur archeologist.) An illustrated version appeared in 1977. The bear, which Betjeman was holding when he died, now resides in St. Pancras, with his elephant companion, Jumbo.