Alastair Hugh Graham (27 June 1904 – 6 October 1982) was an honorary attaché in Athens and Cairo, an Oxford friend of Evelyn Waugh, and, according to Waugh's letters, one of his "romances". He is, together with Hugh Lygon and Stephen Tennant, considered the main inspiration for Sebastian Flyte in Brideshead Revisited. Biography Alastair Hugh Graham was born on 27 June 1904 to Hugh Graham (1860-1921), of Barford House, Barford, Warwickshire, and Jessie, daughter of Andrew Low, of Savannah, Georgia. His father was the younger son of Sir Frederick Ulric Graham, 3rd Baronet (1820–1888), of the Graham Baronets of Netherby in Cumberland, and Lady Jane Hermione Seymour (1832–1909), daughter of Edward Seymour, 12th Duke of Somerset. Jessie Graham, a cotton heiress, would later appear as Lady Circumference in Decline and Fall and as Mrs. Kent-Cumberland in Winner Takes All both by Evelyn Waugh. Alastair Hugh Graham attended a day school in Leamington Spa and was at Wellington College, Berkshire for a very short time, leaving at fifteen. He subsequently studied at Brasenose College, Oxford University, At Oxford, he met Evelyn Waugh around Christmas 1923 or slightly before. There, Graham was part of the Hypocrites' Club with Waugh. Graham sent Waugh a nude photo of himself near a waterfall, asking Waugh to "Come and drink with me somewhere". The Graham family's early 19th-century country house, Barford House, Barford, Warwickshire, between Warwick and Stratford-upon Avon, was where Alastair entertained Waugh as a guest. Graham was Waugh's closest friend from 1924 to 1929. In Brideshead Revisited, Waugh has Charles Ryder revisiting Brideshead Castle, and remembering "I had been there before, first with Sebastian more than twenty years ago on a cloudless day in June...". According to Philip Eade and others, Waugh is here remembering his own love affair with Graham, started at Barford House in 1923 when Graham was 19. In his memoirs, Waugh stated that Graham was the inspiration of Lord Sebastian Flyte even more than Hugh Lygon. In the manuscript of Brideshead Revisited, the name "Alastair" sometimes occurs instead of "Sebastian". In Waugh's autobiography, A Little Learning... an autobiography (1964), Graham appears under the name of Hamish Lennox, and Waugh said of him he was "the friend of my heart". When Waugh left Oxford one term short of the degree requirements in August 1924, he went to live with Graham in a caravan in a field near Beckley, and from there