Harry Clifton and Brideshead’s Sebastian Flyte
The real-life inspiration for a classic character from fiction
The borderlines between fact and fiction are frequently blurred. This is particularly the case, argues David Slattery-Christy, in the case of Evelyn Waugh and his novel Brideshead Revisited.
Brideshead is an uproarious story, filled with many outsized characters. One figure in particular, Sebastian Flyte, is fixed in popular memory. Readers of novels have long been able to picture Flyte – dashing, charming, spontaneous, eccentric – but of his real-life origins we know much less.
Here Slattery-Christy introduces us to Harry Clifton.
The enduring fascination with Evelyn Waugh’s classic novel Brideshead Revisited nearly 80 years after its publication in 1945 is testament to the skill with which he created that world of fading aristocracy and all its eccentric, damaged characters. Notable among these characters was Sebastian Flyte who, although dashing and charming, spiralled out of control with excess and eccentricity. These young things were more brittle than bright.
There have been a few real-life contenders for the inspiration of Flyte. One prominent one was Alistair Graham who Waugh met at Oxford where they quickly became lovers. Waugh had several homosexual relationships while at Oxford and his heightened hedonistic search for sexual pleasure and drinking would lead him to be a founder of the notorious Hypocrites Club. It was a place where sexual fluidity and orgies were common. This obsession with pleasure resulted in Waugh being sent down without degree.
Then I discovered the story of Harry Clifton. He is someone who has been unseen by history until now. Learning about him changed my perception of Flyte and my ideas about who Waugh could have used as inspiration for Sebastian Flyte.
It is only in recent years that the story of the Cliftons of Lytham in Lancashire has begun to emerge from the mists of time. The family seat Lytham Hall, on the Fylde Coast, has now been taken over by a trust and turned into a living museum that charts the eccentric history of the Cliftons – who were among the largest landowners in the country – over several centuries.
During a tour of the house a guide made reference to ‘that awful Harry Clifton’ and my ears pricked. They went on to say that his mother Violet Clifton was furious with Waugh when Brideshead was published because she recognised Harry as Sebastian Flyte and also parts of herself in Lady Marchmain.
I was intrigued and had to know more. I then discovered that Waugh knew the Cliftons and had stayed at Lytham Hall in the 1930s. He described the family in a letter to Lady Asquith as ‘all tearing mad’ but adding how they indulged him in the finest food and champagnes.
Indeed, Harry Clifton was a rather spoilt and indulged young man. It was known he went to Oxford in the 1920s but not where he had been an undergraduate. After some further research I was amazed to discover that Harry had gone up to Oxford to study Modern History at Christ Church. This is where he also had rooms. Of course, for those who have read Brideshead, this is where we first meet Sebastian Flyte where he entertains his friends with eccentric panache.
As much as they weren’t exact contemporaries at Oxford, Waugh did tend to haunt the place longer than usual in the hope that his tutor, with who he had a feud, would relent and allow him to graduate. So he was still frequenting, what was the Hypocrites, and was still a private drinking club as late as 1928. So it is more than probable that this is where Harry and Waugh first met.
Harry was known for his eccentric behaviour, his drinking and gambling, and his pursuit of life’s indulgences and its eccentric pleasures. Harry’s father, John Talbot Clifton died in 1928 (himself a drinker and gambler in his youth who caused a scandal when he had an affair with Lillie Langtry, the famous mistress of the Prince of Wales later Edward VII). This was just a few months before Harry was 21 and once he reached his majority, and could legally inherit the estates, he became determined to live life to the full free of his father’s disapproval.
Harry’s relationship with his father was difficult and the more his father had tried to ‘toughen him up’ the more Harry rebelled against him. His mother, Violet, was also controlling – or tried to be without success and there seems to have been little affection or displays of love. Harry was expected to do his duty. He had other ideas.
In my book, Flyte or Fancy, I wanted to bring these rich characters to life and to explore the relationship they might have had based on what trinkets of information we do know. The more I discovered about Harry and his excessive and eccentric behaviour the more I became convinced that his mother was right in her fury that Flyte was based on him.
During the 1930s Harry began to sell off land and squander the family money in a spectacular way. He took a permanent suite at the Ritz Hotel and, much to everyone’s amazement, another at Claridges. When asked why Harry explained that ‘If I go for a stroll down Park Lane and get tired, I have somewhere to go and rest.’
Harry also wasted money on ill-advised business schemes and was fleeced out of thousands by con men and fraudsters. Once a week he dined at the Ritz with his financial and spiritual advisor who was called The White Goddess. The trouble was nobody else could see her! The staff would dutifully serve her and pull her chair out to play along with the charade. Harry would sit and chat with her all evening engrossed in their conversation.
This scandal was reported back to his mother Violet and she attempted twice to have him certified as insane so his younger brother could take over as Squire Clifton. This was in vain as no doctor was prepared to sign the papers. As Harry’s hedonistic and expensive lifestyle rolled on he became more and more eccentric with his drinking and gambling out of control at the casino tables in London and Monaco.
During a visit to Lytham Hall Waugh met Harry’s sister Easter Daffodil. Born on Easter Monday, her father decided it would be fun to insert ‘Daffodil’ and this was how she was known. She seemed to have the same rebellious, charming and determined nature as her brother. Daffodil ended up causing a scandal by running off and marrying the family gamekeeper in true Lady Chatterley style and was ostracised by most of the family as a result.
By the late 1930s Harry had sold off a lot of the family lands and seemed to be determined to squander the entire family wealth and heritage. He had married an American socialite, Lilian Lowell Griswold, during a drunken binge, and it was reported they sobered up to find they had married.
In 1937 Harry purchased two of the famous Imperial Faberge Eggs on a whim to satisfy Lilian. Harry’s father was a friend to the Tsar’s brother, the Grand Duke Michael, who visited Lytham Hall for a shoot when Harry was a baby, so it would have appealed to his sense of fantasy and grandeur to own something that once belonged to the ill-fated Imperial Romanov family.
Once Brideshead was published in 1945 the Cliftons never spoke to Waugh again and by this time Harry had drifted into a fantasy world where reality was replaced with self delusion. He outlived Waugh and all his siblings and his mother. By the time of his death in 1979 there was nothing left of his family’s estates. He squandered the equivalent of £70 million in today’s money.
Harry’s story and the Brideshead connection through Waugh is only now emerging, so join them on a journey of love, friendship, excess and liberation as they fight to be free of the sexual, dynastic and religious expectations the world demanded of them. Ironically, the fate of Flyte in Waugh’s novel was close to the eventual fate of Harry in real life. Flyte or fancy? You decide •
This feature was originally published November 2023.
David Slattery-Christy was born in Oxford, England, in 1959. He has written several plays, including Naturally Insane! The Life of Dan Leno, about the famous Victorian music hall comedian. He has also written theatre history books and novels, screenplays, and works as a theatre producer, director and consultant.
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Flyte or Fancy: Evelyn Waugh Meets Harry Clifton on the Road to Brideshead
Christyplays Publications, 28 May, 2025
RRP: £12.99 | 978-1838136581
Evelyn Waugh described the Cliftons of Lytham Hall as "all tearing mad" during visits in the 1930s. Join him and Harry Clifton on a journey of love, friendship, excess and liberation as they fight to be free of the sexual, dynastic and religious expectations the world demands of them.
With a mix of fact and fiction, join us for this journey to a land that might-have-been as we meet the eccentric Harry Clifton and his family, and his adventures with friends Bertie Pemberton-Billing and Evelyn Waugh at Oxford in the 1920s, whilst an undergraduate at Christ Church. Discover their association with the Hypocrites Club and the notorious private drinking clubs that revelled in hedonism and sexual liberation. Harry and Evelyn were both eventually sent down from Oxford without degrees.
Harry's irresponsible decisions, after the death of his father, and his wanton disregard for his family's heritage and reputation, and his obsession with the occult and mysticism, that led him to rely on the White Goddess and the Ghost of Hollywood to guide him with disasterous financial decisions. His darker side inspired by his favourite author and poet Edgar Alan Poe.
From an equally disastrous marriage to purchasing Imperial Faberge Eggs, private suites at the Ritz Hotel and Claridges, and the squandering of eye-watering amounts of money, a doomed foray into film producing with Brian Desmond Hurst, his journey continues through the 1930s as his reckless behaviour threatens hundreds of years of his family's reputation and heritage.
On the eve of WW2 it all comes crashing down. Evelyn Waugh decides to separate from his friend but do the seeds of that friendship with Harry influence Waugh's character Sebastian Flyte in Brideshead Revisited? His most famous novel was finally published in 1945 much to the displeasure of Harry's widowed mother Violet Clifton. She never spoke to Waugh again.
With thanks to Kelly Pike.
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