His father, third son of Sir Henry Tyrwhitt and Baroness Berners, came from nearby Stanley Hall. Gerald’s father died in 1907, his uncles died without issue (Gerald used to say ‘three uncles fell off a bridge’), therefore in 1918 he succeeded as fourteenth Lord Berners.It is a measure of the humdrum yet violent and threatening age in which we live that Gerald Berners should usually be referred to as an eccentric. He was talented, civilized, hospitable, and extremely funny. He liked the company of people who appreciated beauty, intelligence, elegance and jokes; he created an atmosphere in which these qualities combined to make perfection. Wherever he was host the food he provided was beyond compare. None of this would have been considered particularly eccentric in days gone by. He was fortunate in that he had enough money to live in comfort and surround himself with beauty, but he was not immensely rich except in talents and the number, diversity and devotion of his friends. I had met him a few times, but we first became friends staying with Mrs Ronnie Greville at Polesden Lacey in 1932, when I was twenty-two and he forty-eight.
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