| Abstract |
The author's T.S. Eliot Memorial Lectures focus on the crucial year 1936, as experienced by two very active young creators. Benjamin Britten and W.H. Auden first found themselves working together in the GPO film unit, a collaboration which flowered and spilled over into the theatre and radio - a new medium that the liveliest creative minds of the time were exploring and exploiting. They also joined forces in works destined for the recital room and concert hall, among them Our Hunting Fathers, the political symbolism of which Donald Mitchell examines in depth, and On This Island, settings of early Auden that comprised Britten's first important set of songs to English texts. These lectures were notable for their first-ever access to Britten's private diaries, which he kept on a daily basis in the thirties, and a revealing portrait emerges of the two men's relationship, of their work together in many different fields, and the politics of the day and their appalled response to the rise of Fascism in Europe. |
