Month: December 2021

Edward Benjamin Britten (1913-76) was born in Suffolk and spent most of his life there. In 1948 he co-founded Suffolk’s Aldeburgh Festival in a venue close to his childhood home and from 1957 he lived in a 17th-century Aldeburgh farmhouse with 5 acres, together with his partner, tenor Peter Pears (1910-86). On being awarded a life peerage just before his death, he chose the title ‘Baron Britten of Aldeburgh in the County of Suffolk’, so great was his affinity for the area.

Britten began composing from the age of 5 and grew up knowing exactly the career he wished to pursue. At age 16 he won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music and by the time he turned 18 he had written over 700 musical pieces. He was influenced by the English Baroque composer Henry Purcell (1659-95) but was rather dismissive of later luminaries Elgar and Vaughan Williams.

Britten played piano and viola, and wrote song cycles and orchestral works but his most celebrated compositions were his 16 operas, the first of which was ‘Peter Grimes’ (1945), the last being ‘Death in Venice’ (1975). With these he began a new English-language pathway for the genre. His musical style was characterised by clarity and tension provided by contrasts, laced with childhood reflections.

(Top image: Wikimedia Commons / Public domain)

The UK’s Gypsy, Roma and Traveller (GRT) community is roughly estimated at 120,000-300,000 people. They have the poorest life outcomes of all the minority groupings, with the shortest life expectancy, lowest educational attainment, more health issues and a high crime rate leading to over-representation in the prison population.

The sudden arrival of GRT caravans, trucks and cars on public parkland is almost always greeted with police visits and dismay from neighbouring householders. To tackle the problems of discarded rubbish and invasion of amenity space, local councils provide facilities in designated spots around their districts, but these may already be occupied or insufficient for a particular travelling group.

GRT families will often stay long-term if someone is old, ill or completing school exams, and many now opt for permanent bricks-and-mortar, though this may never feel quite ‘right’. Apart from New Age Travellers originating from the 1960s’ hippy culture, GRTs have a centuries-old history. Some came from northern India via Europe and it is said that people thought they looked ‘Egyptian‘, which morphed into ‘gypsy‘. Their nomadic way of life was well suited to seasonal farmwork, for example. They were skilled in various manual trades and crafts, but these are more regulated today.

(Image: Peter O’Connor aka anemoneprojectors at Flickr.com / CC BY-SA 2.0)