Gerald’s friends

Among his various friends and associates, Lord Berners could number several of the leading artistic and academic figures of his day. There were, for instance, the scribbling Sitwell siblings, Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell; the politically variegated Mitford sisters, one of whom, Diana, commissioned him to write a ‘Fascist March’; eccentric fashionista Elsa Schiaparelli; acidulous novelist Evelyn Waugh; classicist and wit Maurice Bowra; experimental wordsmith Gertrude Stein (above, with Berners), and the inevitable Salvador Dali. All of these, plus many besides, added their own defintive hue to the composer’s already colourful existence.