Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson, Lord Berners (1884-1950). British composer, novelist, painter and aesthete

Lord Berners was born on 18 September, 1883, at Apley Hall, Bridgenorth, Shropshire. He inherited his title, which had been created in 1455, from his uncle in 1918. He had a wealthy, but unhappy childhood. His parents were difficult and remote and before leaving for boarding school, he was mostly brought up by a domineering grandmother.

On leaving Eton College, he twice failed the examination to enter the Foreign Office. However, he served for the next ten years as an honorary attaché at the British Embassies in Constantinople, Rome and Paris. He then succeeded to his peerage and finally started the life he was destined for, of music, painting and writing, all of which he was extremely skilled at. When his mother died in 1931, Berners moved into Faringdon House, Oxfordshire, which he had inherited earlier, with his companion Robin Heber-Percy, and so began a life of glittering, but eccentric bonhomie and fabulous parties with friends from the world of music, art and literature. Berners was a deeply knowledgeable and inspirational figure of a particular life and time, with the layers of complexity and culture from another age. Some of his musical compositions are still in the repertoire. He suffered from depression in later years, and after a production of his ballet Les Sirènes in 1946 lost his eyesight. Lord Berners died in Faringdon in 1950.