ABSTRACT
Lord Berners’ talents in music, literature and painting earned him respect from many of the great artistic minds of the day. Berners were far more interested in exercising his wit and carrying out practical jokes than he was in the more serious matters of the time. Berners’ mother had married Colonel Ward Bennitt in 1908, just a year after her first husband’s sudden death. Despite being primarily concerned with Berners’ early life, many of the themes which recur throughout First Childhood were equally as important to him as an adult. In his letter to Walton, Berners jokingly claimed to have had a solicitor check his manuscript for anything libellous. The music of Lord Berners deserves reassessment; for the works of a composer who was so well-known and admired during his lifetime to have become almost completely neglected in the concert halls and theatres where they were first received with great success seems unduly harsh.
