John Wilsey Rawlings (1912-1970)

PORTAIT OF STEPHEN TENNANT, c.1935, vintage silver gelatin print, image size, 240 x 190mm, in period mount, signed by the photographer in lower margin of mount

Stephen Tennant (1906 – 1987) was a British socialite known for his decadent lifestyle. During the 1920s and 1930s, Tennant was an important member – the “Brightest”, it is said – of the “Bright Young People”. His friends included Rex Whistler, Cecil Beaton, the Sitwells, Lady Diana Manners and the Mitford girls.

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 Hon. Miles Malpractice in some of Waugh’s other novels.