Lord Sebastian Flyte

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 of the aristocratic Marchmain 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 a fellow undergraduate at what would eventually be Hertford College, Oxford.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 of Brideshead Castle. Despite Sebastian's initial reluctance, Charles eventually meets the rest of the family; his father Lord Marchmain is an Anglican who converted to Roman Catholicism, he has two sisters, Julia and Cordelia and an elder brother Lord 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' relationship is never explictly referred to in the novel, though the line "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homosexuality was still illegal and any explicit allusion to it would have ensured that the story would have remained unpublished.

Inspiration for character

It has been suggested that Waugh based the character of Sebastian Flyte on Stephen Tennant.

Film portrayals

• Anthony Andrews portrayed Flyte in the 1981 UK Television production of Brideshead Revisited.

• Ben Whishaw is to portray the character in a film version of Brideshead Revisited that is currently in production.