Stephen James Napier Tennant was a British socialite known for his decadent lifestyle.
Background
He was born into British nobility, the youngest son of a Scottish peer, Edward Tennant, 1st Baron Glenconner, and the former Pamela Wyndham, one of the Wyndham sisters and of The Souls clique. His mother was also a cousin of Lord Alfred Douglas (1870–1945), Oscar Wilde"s lover and a sonneteer. On his father"s death, Tennant"s mother married Lord Grey, a fellow bird-lover.
Career
He was called "the brightest" of the "Bright Young People." Tennant"s eldest brother Edward – "Bim" – was killed in the First World War. He is widely considered to be the model for Cedric Hampton in Nancy Mitford"s novel Love in a Cold Climate, one of the inspirations for Lord Sebastian Flyte in Evelyn Waugh"s Brideshead Revisited, and a model for the Honorary Miles Malpractice in some of Waugh"s other novels.