Sofka traces the extraordinary history of her maternal grandfather, the Mad Boy, and how he came to live with the eccentric composer Lord Berners at Faringdon House.
Reviews
By Alexander Waugh, 07 OCT 2014

“An “absorbing, candid, critical and loving tale”… “and there isn’t a character in The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother and Me whom one wouldn’t dearly wish to meet.”

By Daisy Goodwin, 05 OCT 2014

“If you want a guide to the heady, bitchy, glamorous world chronicled by Nancy Mitford, Evelyn Waugh and Anthony Powell, this is a good place to start… Sumptuous.”

By Dinah Birch, 09 OCT 2014

“Zinovieff provides a vivid sketch of the extraordinarily glamorous society of Faringdon in its heyday, especially during the 30s, as Berners and Heber-Percy reached the peak of their fashionable appeal. They knew “everyone”, and almost everyone came to stay…”

By Sebastian Shakespeare, 01 NOV 2014

“Prepare to be seduced by outlandish delights and strange creatures”

By Philip Henscher, Susan Hill, 05 JAN 2015

“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.”

By Rachel Cooke, 19 OCT 2014

“unputdownable… gloriously lavish, something fascinating to gaze at on every page. Sofka Zinovieff’s tale of Lord Berners and his lover is packed with money, sex, secrets and bad blood”.

By Mirabel Cecil, 18 OCT 2014

“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.”

By Mark Amory, 01 NOV 2014

“Formidably researched and wonderfully enjoyable.”

By James Fergusson, 19 NOV 2014

“If the Berners story has been well told before… its sequel is all Sofka’s: an affecting account of how Faringdon’s improbable new chatelaine laboured to unravel the truth about her very troubled grandmother.”

05 JAN 2015

“It was a house to live in, not to rush out from all day to kill enemies and animals,” wrote Nancy Mitford of Faringdon House. Sofka Zinovieff inherited Faringdon from her grandfather ’the Mad Boy” of the title, Robert Heber-Percy, the lover of Lord Berners. Sofka first went to Faringdon, a house with an illustrious and chequered history, with her mother, Victoria, when she was seventeen. “Entering the gates at Faringdon took me into an unfamiliar yet hugely seductive realm.”

05 JAN 2015

“A fabulous tale of glittering, if decadent society.”

31 MAR 2015

“An entertaining dose of British country life and high-style scandal.” A “well-researched, engaging memoir”

By Matthew Price, 28 MAR 2015

A “delicious family history”. A “sumptuously produced book that abounds with gorgeous photographs and typographical frills. Zinovieff has collected heaps of anecdotes from a bygone era when shameless hedonism reigned.”

By Alan Hollinghurst, 23 APR 2015

“An absorbing as well as original book”

By Elizabeth Lowry, 24 APR 2015

Henry James’s “sense of irony would have been inordinately tickled by Sofka Zinovieff’s entertaining memoir”.”Ms. Zinovieff handles her flamboyant material with considerable tact and finesse, giving due weight to the outlandishness of it all while still acknowledging a certain darkness at its core.”

By Miranda Seymour, 26 APR 2015

“Witty, empathetic and stylish”

Books