Alastair Hugh Graham (27 June 1904 - 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, considered the main inspiration for Sebastian Flyte in Brideshead Revisited.
Alastair Hugh Graham was born on 27 June 1904. His mother was a cotton heiress from Savannah, Georgia, Jessie Low, while his father, Hugh Graham (1860-1921), was a British landed aristocrat of the Graham baronets, the younger son of Sir Frederick Ulric Graham, of Netherby, 3d Baronet (1820–1888) and Lady Jane Hermione Seymour (1832–1909), daughter of Edward Seymour, 12th Duke of Somerset. Jessie Graham 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 Wellington College, Wellington, Berkshire, and then went to Brasenose College, Oxford University, where he met Evelyn Waugh around Christmas 1923 or slightly before. Graham sent Waugh the photo of a naked man near a waterfall, asking Waugh to "Come and drink with me somewhere".Netherby Hall was the Grahams official residence, but Alastair Hugh Graham and his family lived in an early 19th century country house, Barford House, Barford, Warwickshire, between Warwick and Stratford-upon Avon, and it's here that he had as a guest Evelyn Waugh. Graham was Waugh's closest friend from 1924 to 1929. In Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh makes Charles Ryder 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, here Waugh is remembering his own love affair with Alastair Graham, started at Graham's family home, Barford House, in 1923 when Graham was 19 years old. The same Waugh stated in his memories that Graham was the inspiration of Lord Sebastian Flyte even more than Hugh Lygon. Moreover sometime the name Alistair occurs in place of Sebastian in the manuscript of Brideshead Revisited. 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".