Dresden

In Dresden, as in his earlier memoirs, First Childhood, A Distant Prospect, and The Chateau de Resenlieu—all published by Turtle Point Press with Helen Mark Books—Lord Gerald Hugh Tyrwitt-Wilson Berners shows the neat precision of style and wit that typifies his musical compositions. Here is a subtle work of art and a small masterpiece of understatement.

The quintessential English eccentric, Lord Berners (1883–1950) was a composer, novelist, painter, and conspicuous aesthete. Known as the En...