Lord Sebastian Flyte

Lord Sebastian Flyte is a charming but self destructive and ultimately tragic fictional character from the Evelyn Waugh novel "Brideshead Revisited."

Character

Sebastian is childlike in some ways, still carrying his teddy bear Aloysius and retaining a strong affection for his nanny. He is the younger son and second eldest of the Marquess of Marchmain and a member of the aristocratic Flyte family, which is portrayed as symbolic of the decline of the English nobility in the 1920s and 1930s.

Lord Sebastian Flyte first appears in the novel in March 1923 when he vomits through the window of the room of Charles Ryder, who is an undergraduate at an unnamed college of the University of Oxford, often thought to be Hertford College. The next day he sends flowers to apologise and invites Charles to lunch with him. The two young men become close friends and Sebastian introduces Charles to his hedonistic college friends, then takes him to the palatial family home, Brideshead Castle. Despite Sebastian's initial reluctance, Charles eventually meets the rest of the family; his father Lord Marchmain is a former Anglican who converted to Roman Catholicism, his two sisters, Lady Julia and Lady Cordelia, and an elder brother, "Bridey," the Earl of Brideshead.

Despite efforts from his manipulative mother to contain Sebastian's drinking problem, he soon drifts away from his family and descends into a dissolute and drunken life abroad. When it becomes apparent that Lady Marchmain is extremely ill, Charles is contacted once again by the Flyte family and asked to find his old friend and bring him home. Charles discovers Sebastian in Fez, Morocco, though he is now an irrecoverable alcoholic and Charles is forced to return to England alone.

The exact nature of Sebastian and Charles's relationship is never explicitly referred to in the novel, though the phrase "naughtiness high in the catalogue of grave sins" has led to much debate. It should be noted however, that at the time of the novel's publication homosexuality was still illegal and any explicit allusion to it would have ensured that the story would have remained unpublished, although it seems clear both in the book and film that they thought a lot of each other.

Inspiration for character

It has been suggested that Waugh based the character of Lord Sebastian Flyte on Stephen Tennant, or, alternatively, on his lifelong friend Alastair Graham.

Film portrayals

* Anthony Andrews portrayed Flyte in the 1981 Granada Television production of "Brideshead Revisited."

* Ben Whishaw portrayed the character in the 2008 film version of "Brideshead Revisited".