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Lead book review

My mad gay grandfather and me

A review of The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother and Me, by Sofka Zinovieff. Stravinsky, Beaton, Dali, Betjeman, Fonteyn - Berners and his lover 'The Mad Boy' knew everyone who was anyone

18 October 2014

9:00 AM

18 October 2014

9:00 AM

The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother and Me Sofka Zinovieff

Cape, pp.418, £25

Family history is all the rage at the moment — finding out about one’s ancestors, digging back into one’s roots. Sofka Zinovieff has written the strange, and strangely moving, tale of her family’s unorthodox relationships. By turns comical, tragicomical and melodramatic, her book often reads much like fiction, and she recounts it like a novel.

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Available from the Spectator Bookshop, £21 Tel: 08430 600033. Mirabel Cecil is co-author (with her husband Hugh Cecil) of In Search of Rex Whistler.


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