Patrick O’Connor

Too Many B…s

Letters From a Life: The Selected Letters and Diaries of Benjamin Britten Vols One & Two 1923-1945

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Faber & Faber 1403pp £75 order from our bookshop

In his introduction, itself a short book, Donald Mitchell invokes that old devil Freud to be a witness at the dismembering of Benji Britten’s young self: ‘If a man has been his mother’s undisputed darling he retains throughout life the triumphant feeling, the confidence in success, which not seldom brings actual success with it.’

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