The true star of the new film Brideshead Revisited — as of the Granada television series against which it is being so disadvantageously measured by many — is Sir John Vanbrugh's Yorkshire pile, Castle Howard. Director Julian Jarrold might, one assumes, have had the pick of any number of vast country houses, so wasn't it inviting odious comparison that his team should have gone for this one again? Can the house have been the model for Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead? I don't think so.

When the television drama was being filmed at huge cost between 1979 and 1981, the property was still the home of George Howard. He is said to have gained a mischievous satisfaction from its use by Granada since he was at the time the chairman of the BBC (with curious notions as to what this entitled him to in terms of licence-funded tarts for his bed, according to Will Wyatt, a top Beeb executive, in his published memoirs). Following his death in 1984, the house did not pass into the care of his eldest son, as would normally have been the case, on account of his long-term incapacity for such responsibility. Though Henry Howard continued to live in some style there, his younger brother Simon took charge, maintaining the high profile of the house as a tourist attraction.

I was saddened to read in April of Henry's death, aged 58. Some 30 years ago, he had been my guest in Oxford for a brief period, when he took a particularly keen interest in the burgeoning punk scene at the Oranges and Lemons pub in St Clements. It was not an easy matter to persuade him to return north. I hope that the filming of the latest Brideshead might have provided him with some interest in his last days.

The film, as I have hinted, has attracted what can best be called a mixed press. I went to see it on Monday night, expecting a pale imitation of the TV series (of which, incidentally, none could be a greater admirer than I, having been present at some of the earliest filming in Oxford and knowing a number of people involved in the production).

Instead, lolling among the plush splendour of the Odeon Magdalen Street's super-luxury balcony seating (completely empty save for the two of us), I savoured a classy movie that could be described with no exaggeration as a near masterpiece.

While it differs to a degree from Waugh's novel (which film-of-a-book does not?), this gripping picture is true to its spirit, certainly in its ever-present religious dimension and in its celebration of the country's great ancestral seats. The performances are all of the highest quality, except perhaps for the three I have seen most ardently praised. Emma Thompson, good though she is, never seems quite top-drawer enough to convince as Lady Marchmain; ditto Michael Gambon as her estranged husband and Ben Whishaw as their younger son, Lord Sebastian Flyte (who is also given a highly inappropriate overtone of high campery). Allowing Sebastian to be called "the Lord Flyte", incidentally, by an Oxford character who would certainly have known better, is an unforgivable solecism.

Once you get over the fact that he seems to be trying to sound more like Jeremy Irons than Jeremy Irons, Matthew Goode (pictured above) is a superb Charles Ryder (here denied his role as commentator except during the final Second World War scene). Hayley Atwell excels as Lady Julia Flyte and Felicity Jones as her kid sister Cordelia (robbed, alas, of her great speech in respect of the booze-soaked Sebastian's likely ending . . . "I have seen others like him, and I believe they are very near and dear to God . . ."). Though their parts are sadly small, I also loved Joseph Beattie as the stuttering aesthete Anthony Blanche, Jonathan Cake as Julia's worldly-wise American husband, Ed Stoppard as the preposterous dull dog Bridey Flyte and, especially, Patrick Malahide as Ryder's deliciously malicious father (a part that had seemed, after the TV series, to have been John Gielgud's alone).

I returned home to a late-night reading of The Times and found another great Vanbrugh house (of which, I confess, I had scarcely heard) allegedly under threat. Seaton Delaval Hall, in coastal Northumberland, must be saved for the nation (according to 20 leading architects and academics who signed a joint letter to the newspaper) following its owner's decision to sell. This "landmark work of the English Baroque", designed in 1719, could, they say, be lost to the public for ever. "If sold privately," they argue, "it may be turned into a hotel or perhaps redeveloped into private accommodation." Now what, I wonder, is so very wrong with that?