{"product_id":"lord-berners-book-sam-leith-9780571247653","title":"Lord Berners","description":"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 cliché, 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","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49559957012753,"sku":"GOR006445334","price":18.49,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53237051982097,"sku":"NLS9780571247653","price":30.79,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0571247652.jpg?v=1772273143","url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/products\/lord-berners-book-sam-leith-9780571247653","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}