Patrick O’Connor
Too Many B…s
Letters From a Life: The Selected Letters and Diaries of Benjamin Britten Vols One & Two 1923-1945
By Donald Mitchell & Philip Reed (eds)
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.’
Mrs Britten, ambitious for her son to be the ‘Fourth B’ – after Bach, Beethoven and Brahms – wilful, controlling his friendships and study, or so witnesses remember her, is the first recipient of Britten’s affectionate gush; Peter Pears is the second. His way of addressing them is somewhat similar,
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