Lord Merlin John Wood Lord Merlin is based on Mitford's good friend Gerald Berners (1883-1950), a musician, painter, and author. Like the character he inspired, Berners dyed his pigeons pink, adorned his dogs with diamond collars, and celebrated the hour of his birth each night. Actor John Wood's credits include the films War Games, Shadowlands, Rasputin, The Avengers, An Ideal Husband, Longitude, The Little Vampire, and Chocolat. On television he has appeared in The Clothes in the Wardrobe, Memento Man, and Tartuffe. In Mitford's words: Lord Merlin He was a great collector, and not only Merlinford, but also his houses in London and Rome flowed over with treasures ... Lord Merlin loved jewels; his two black whippets wore diamond necklaces designer for whiter, but not slimmer or more graceful necks that theirs.... His taste was by no means confined to antiques; he was an artist and a musician himself, and the patron of all the young. Modern music streamed perpetually from Merlinford, and he had built a small but exquisite playhouse in the garden.... Such a man was bound to become a sort of legend to the bluff Cotswold squires among whom he lived. But, although, they could not approve of an existence which left out of account the killing, though by no means the eating, of delicious game, and though they were puzzled beyond words by the aestheticism and the teases, they accepted him without question as one of themselves. The Pursuit of Love, Chapter 5