Dimensions
131 x 198 x 15mm
Lord Berners was one of England's quintessential eccentrics. He was a composer, novelist, painter and conspicuous aesthete who met and knew some of the leading artistic figures of the century, including Stravinsky, Diaghilev, Evelyn Waugh, Picasso, Cocteau, the Sitwells, Salvador Dali, Balanchine and Gertrude Stein. Nancy Mitford in her novel 'The Pursuit Of Love' based her character Lord Merlin on Berners, who used to dip his pigeons into basins of magenta, green and ultramarine so that when released they resembled, as Mitford wrote, "a cloud of confetti in the sky".
This book is the second volume of Lord Berners' memoirs. It is a poignant and witty account of his schooldays at Eton, early adolescence and a boy's awakening to the spell of Wagner, ballet and musical composition. It is beautifully written, sad and at times extremely funny, and a classic of its kind.
Sequel to 'First Childhood'.
