colours and at one point entertaining Penelope Betjeman's horse Moti to tea. There were paper flowers in the garden and the interior of the house was adorned with joke books and joke notices, such as "Mangling Done Here". As a visitor, Patrick Leigh Fermor, recalled: Other visitors to Faringdon included Igor Stravinsky, Salvador Dalí, H. G. Wells, and Tom Driberg. His Rolls-Royce automobile contained a small clavichord keyboard which could be stored beneath the front seat. Near his house he had a 100-foot viewing tower, Faringdon Folly, constructed as a birthday present in 1935 for Heber-Percy, a notice at the entrance reading: "Members of the Public committing suicide from this tower do so at their own risk". Berners also drove around his estate wearing a pig's-head mask to frighten the locals. He was subject throughout his life to periods of depression which became more pronounced during the Second World War, when he had a nervous breakdown. He lived in lodgings for a period in Oxford where his friend Maurice Bowra got him a job cataloguing books. Following the production of his last ballet Les Sirènes (1946) he lost his eyesight. Death and epitaph He died in 1950 aged 66 at Faringdon House, bequeathing his estate to Robert Heber-Percy, who lived there until his own death in 1987. His ashes are buried in the lawn near the house. Berners wrote his own epitaph, which appears on his gravestone: Here lies Lord Berners One of the learners His great love of learning May earn him a burning But, Praise the Lord! He seldom was bored. Music Berners' early music, written during his period at the British embassy in Rome during World War I, was avant-garde in style. These are mostly songs (in English, French and German) and piano pieces, many written using his original name, Gerald Tyrwhitt. Later pieces were composed in a more accessible style, such as the Trois morceaux, Fantaisie espagnole (1919), Fugue in C minor (1924), and several ballets, including The Triumph of Neptune (1926) (based on a story by Sacheverell Sitwell) and Luna Park, commissioned for a C. B. Cochran London revue in 1930. His final three ballets, A Wedding Bouquet, Cupid and Psyche and Les Sirènes, were all written in collaboration with his friends Frederick Ashton (as choreographer) and Constant Lambert (as music director). Berners was also friendly with William Walton. Walton dedicated Belshazzar's Feast to Berners,