Benjamin Britten was a great reader of poetry, and poetry profoundly affected his musical genius and style of composition. Friendships and collaborations with writers – Auden and Forster among them – left their mark. No other composer of songs, not e...

Ivor Gurney's poetic career was unusual. It began in 1917 and 1919 with two small volumes of verse ("Severn and Somme / War's Embers", published by Carcanet). Then in 1922 he entered the asylum from which only an occasional poem in a magazine emerged...