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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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9 Berners, unpublished notebook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
The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother, and Me Page 45
