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The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother, and Me

Page 45

by Sofka Zinovieff


  Thank you, Alan Hollinghurst, for reading the manuscript with amazing care and taking the art of correcting to new heights. Thanks also to Paul Johnston, Gavin Bryars and Peter Dickinson who commented on early drafts.

  Thanks to my dear agent Caroline Dawnay for her marvellous support. And to Sophie Scard and United Agents.

  Dan Franklin has been the most wonderful editor from the initial proposal right through to the final corrections. I am deeply grateful. Also, to everyone at Jonathan Cape who has been involved with the book, especially Clare Bullock, Neil Bradford, Penelope Goodare, James Jones, Mikaela Pedlow, Eugenie Todd and Peter Ward.

  Thank you, Lara and Anna, for all your support – the best daughters that anyone could wish for.

  This book is dedicated with love to my husband, Vassilis Papadimitriou.

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  Note: Unpublished documents come from a number of different sources. Most of Lord Berners’ papers, including letters and notebooks, are gathered in the British Library – thanks to the Berners Trust for permission to quote from them. Letters from Billa Harrod to Roy Harrod are in the archives of the Norfolk Record Office (ACC2005/362 box 7). Other letters, diaries and notebooks are in private collections. Diana Mosely letters are reproduced by kind permission of Charlotte Mosely and the Mitford Archive.

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  Amory, Mark, Lord Berners: The Last Eccentric, Chatto & Windus, London, 1998

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  –––– The Happy Years: Diaries 1944–48 Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1972

  –––– The Strenuous Years: Diaries 1948–55,

  Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1973 Berlin, Isaiah, Personal Impressions, Pimlico,

  London, 1998 Berners, Gerald, A Distant Prospect, Constable, London, 1945

  –––– The Château de Résenlieu, Turtle Point Press and Helen Marx Books, New York, 2000

  –––– Dresden, Turtle Point Press and Helen MarxBooks, New York, 2008

  –––– Collected Tales and Fantasies of Lord Berners, including Percy Wallingford, The Camel, Mr Pidger, Count Omega, First Childhood, The Romance of a Nose, Far From the Madding War, Turtle Point Press and Helen Marx Books, New York, 1999

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  NOTES


  The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was made. To locate a specific passage, please use the search feature on your ebook reader.

  CHAPTER ONE

  A Fish-shaped Handbag

  Appearing on page 5

  1 Alan Hollinghurst, ‘Pink Doves’, short story, Festival Internazionale di Roma 2006

  CHAPTER TWO

  Behind the Rocking Horse

  Appearing between pages 11 and 29

  2 Quennell, p. 138

  3 Charles Duff, interview

  4 Dickinson, p. 78

  5 Acton, More Memoirs of an Aesthete, p. 34

  6 Hart-Davis, p. 120

  7 Berners, First Childhood, in Collected Tales, p. 5

  8 Ibid.

  9 Berners, unpublished notebook

  10 Berners, Far From the Madding War, in Collected Tales, p. 383

  11 Carpenter, p. 102

  12 Fielding, The Face on the Sphinx, p. 2

  13 Sitwell, p. 180

  14 Berners, First Childhood, in Collected Tales, p. 82

  15 Rowse, p. 48

  16 Amory, Lord Berners, p. 73

  17 Mary Gifford, ‘Aspects of a Biography’, pp. 30-31

  18 Letter to Clarissa Churchill, 1941

  19 Dickinson, p. 7

  20 Berners, First Childhood, in Collected Tales, p. 53

  21 Berners, A Distant Prospect, p. 45

  22 Berners, First Childhood, in Collected Tales, p. 65

  23 Ibid., p.107

  24 Berners, A Distant Prospect, p. 65

  25 Berners, First Childhood, in Collected Tales, P. 194

  26 Ibid.

  27 Berners, A Distant Prospect, p. 61

  28 Berners, Dresden, p. 84

  29 Ibid., p. 91

  30 Ibid., p. 84

  31 Brinnin, p. 354

  32 Desmond Guinness, ‘At Home with a Musical Eccentric’, Irish Times, 23 May 1975

  33 Stravinsky, Selected Correspondence, p. 153

  34 Berners, First Childhood, in Collected Tales, p. 46

  35 Berners, The Château de Résenlieu, p. 1

  36 Ibid., p. 18

  37 Ibid., p. 41

  38 Ibid., p. 62

  39 Nancy Mitford, ‘Faringdon House’, House & Garden, Aug.–Sept. 1950

 

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