Extravagances

Tennant, the brightest of the ‘Bright Young Things’ and called the ‘last professional beauty’ by Osbert Sitwell, was an prominent personality in the young Bohemian crowd of aristocrats and socialites in 1920s London. He was born into British nobility as the youngest son to Edward Tennant, 1^stBaron Gleconner, and Pamela Wyndham, cousin to Lord Alfred Douglas, Oscar Wilde’s lover. He was known for his eccentricity, dramatic fashion and extravagant parties, all of which served as inspiration to his literary friends and their works, including Nancy Mitford’s Love in a Cold Climate and Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisted. It was rumored that Tennant spent 17 years in bed, and although a flight of fancy, he did spend much of his later years at his home Wilsford Manor, where he held court to many notable guests including Cecil Beaton, Rex Whistler, Siegfried Sassoon, David Hockey and Kenneth Anger, amongst others.