We cherish eccentrics, but what is it like if they are family members? Selina Hastings’ The Red Earl is a homage to her father, the 16^th Earl of Huntingdon: an aristocrat who became a revolutionary, ran off to the South Pacific and worked as Diego Rivera’s assistant. Sofka Zinovieff’s The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother and Me is an account of the scandal-filled lives of a group of 1930s aesthetes, who frequented Faringdon House in Oxfordshire. The roll call included Mitfords, Betjemans, Dali, Gertrude Stein and Stravinsky. Sofka, the granddaughter of Lord Berners’ lover, brings the Faringdon circle to life. Chaired by Juliet Nicolson, social historian, novelist, critic and memoirist.