A talk by Sofka Zinovieff on her book ‘The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother and Me’

Heber-Percy was the writer Sofka Zinovieff’s maternal grandfather, and in her new book she tells the story of how she came to inherit Faringdon House on his death in 1987 (she was then a 26 year-old anthropology student living above a shop in the Peloponnese). But to get there, she must first present us with a series of portraits: of the eccentric Berners, who kept a clavichord in his car and dyed his doves turquoise, pink and gold; of Heber-Percy, who cared nothing for books or music, preferring instead to shoot, to ride and to drink; and of Jennifer Fry, the society beauty whom Heber-Percy unaccountably married in 1942, 11 years after his arrival at Faringdon. Fry’s daughter, Victoria, is the author’s mother, and among those Heber-Percy bypassed when he chose her as his heir. Yes, as family sagas go, this one has everything: money, sex, secrets, bad blood. There is even a terrifying Mrs Danvers figure in the form of Rosa Proll, Faringdon’s Austrian housekeeper.