Lord Berners

The Last Eccentric

Biography & Memoir
Cover of the book Lord Berners by Sam Leith, Faber & Faber
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Author: Sam Leith ISBN: 9780571287284
Publisher: Faber & Faber Publication: October 4, 2012
Imprint: Faber & Faber Language: English
Author: Sam Leith
ISBN: 9780571287284
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Publication: October 4, 2012
Imprint: Faber & Faber
Language: English

Here lies Lord Berners/One of life's learners,
Thanks be to the Lord/He was never bored.

So reads the epitaph on the gravestone of Lord Berners. In its witty way, it hints at his range of accomplishment. He was a composer (admired by Stravinsky), writer, painter, aesthete and eccentric, indeed in Mark Amory's words 'The Last Eccentric', famously dyeing the pigeons at his house, Faringdon, in vibrant colours, and, for a time, having a giraffe as a pet and tea companion. His literary and artistic milieu was glittering: Stravinsky, Picasso, Salvador Dali, Siegfried Sassoon, John Betjeman, the Sitwells, Harold Nicolson, Frederick Ashton and Gertrude Stein - they all belonged to it.

In fiction, he was famously portrayed as Lord Merlin in Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love.

'As social history and a chronicle of a mad-cap English eccentric this long awaited, much needed and beautifully written book is, to use a simple clich, indispensable.' Alexander Waugh, Literary Review

'In Amory, this engaging character has found the ideal biographer. Getting the exact measure of its subject throughout, written in a dry, wittily ironic prose ... the biography offers of sheer bliss.' Gilbert Adair, Sunday Times

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

Here lies Lord Berners/One of life's learners,
Thanks be to the Lord/He was never bored.

So reads the epitaph on the gravestone of Lord Berners. In its witty way, it hints at his range of accomplishment. He was a composer (admired by Stravinsky), writer, painter, aesthete and eccentric, indeed in Mark Amory's words 'The Last Eccentric', famously dyeing the pigeons at his house, Faringdon, in vibrant colours, and, for a time, having a giraffe as a pet and tea companion. His literary and artistic milieu was glittering: Stravinsky, Picasso, Salvador Dali, Siegfried Sassoon, John Betjeman, the Sitwells, Harold Nicolson, Frederick Ashton and Gertrude Stein - they all belonged to it.

In fiction, he was famously portrayed as Lord Merlin in Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love.

'As social history and a chronicle of a mad-cap English eccentric this long awaited, much needed and beautifully written book is, to use a simple clich, indispensable.' Alexander Waugh, Literary Review

'In Amory, this engaging character has found the ideal biographer. Getting the exact measure of its subject throughout, written in a dry, wittily ironic prose ... the biography offers of sheer bliss.' Gilbert Adair, Sunday Times

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