A Distant Prospect

Wellington claimed that the Battle of Waterloo was "won on the playing fields of Eton." For Gerald Tyrwhitt, the 14th Baron Berners, however, a war was fought on those self-same fields. Born in 1883, Berners grew up in the twilight years of the Victorian Age, a time when the scions of gentry were expected to excel at sports, marry advantageously, and settle into a quiet life of shooting parties and gentleman's clubs. Young Gerald, however, was made of different stuff, preferring art to sport and nurturing an unholy passion for opera. In the first volume of his autobiography, First Childhood, Baron Berners recounts his early years from birth through the end of grammar school. In A Distant Prospect, he takes the reader through the Eton years up to his 16th year--a time composed equally of terror and self-discovery. Berners, who as an adult would garner a reputation for eccentricity, began his career as an oddball youth. It can't have been easy growing up an aesthete and a homosexual in that social class or era, but Berners offers up his life story with both humor and honesty. This coming-of-age tale never strays into mawkish sentimentality, and provides a crystal-clear window into both a vanished era and a remarkable life in the making.