Patrick O'Connor
THE EXUBERANT BOY
Journeying Boy: The Diaries of the Young Benjamin Britten 1928-1938
Selected and edited by John Evans (Faber & Faber 576pp £25)

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The final words written by Benjamin Britten in these extraordinary diaries that he kept almost daily between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five were 'Energetic if nothing else'. As one follows his progress from reluctant schoolboy - how he hated the 'abominable hole', as he described his public school - to successful young composer about town, the abiding impression is of his tremendous capacity for work and for attending to the wide circle of friends he quickly built up. The other aspects of his character that quickly become clear are on the one hand his extremely sophisticated and sharp critical ear for all things musical, but on the other his dangerously naïve attitude to his own sexuality, and other people's reactions to certain aspects of it.

Although some passages from the diaries have been published before - in the notes to the first volumes of Britten's letters, and in Humphrey Carpenter's biography - this is the first time they have been made available in a full version. John Evans, who has edited them with obvious affection and devotion, writes that although they have been shortened, 'no entries have been omitted for reasons of confidentiality or sensitivity', and those chosen are reproduced in their entirety, spelling mistakes and all.

'Why ever was school invented, at least away from one's beloveds?' Britten asks, and later complains of the little time he has to practise the piano ('perhaps 5 min a day?'). His time there was clearly a trial, yet he seems to have earned the admiration of at least some of the masters and his contemporaries, and then there is this sudden, poignant entry on the final day of his last term: 'I am terribly sorry to say goodbye to many of them ... I didn't think I should be so sorry to leave.' It was, of course, boyhood's end, and for the rest of his life Britten would be battling with a sort of Peter Pan complex, eager for the company of children - and composing some great music for them - but always in danger of having his attentions cast under disapproving scrutiny.

Once in London, at the Royal College of Music, Britten is at last able to devote his attention totally to his compositions. Wagner, Mahler, Stravinsky and Ravel receive his rapturous accolades: Tristan und Isolde is 'this wonder of the world'; Das Lied von der Erde 'one of the world's No 1 works'; and when Mengelberg conducts Ravel's Bolero with the LSO, 'I was nearly hysterical'. At the opposite extreme, he is disdainful of the famous British conductors of the day, especially Beecham ('vilely rude'), Boult ('terrible, execrable') and Henry Wood ('usual eccentricities and meaningless vandalism'). Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Walton ('the head-prefect of English music') all come in for a good deal of stick as well.

However, a lot of his reactions are charmingly those of the enthusiastic young fellow, as when he goes to see Jack Buchanan in Stand Up and Sing - 'a perfectly topping, side-splitting, rollicking good show'. His first substantial commissions come from the celebrated GPO Film Unit, and this stopwatch discipline, timing music to the editor's instructions, must have been of enormous help to him in his subsequent music for the stage. Britten was a dedicated film-goer, enjoying movies of many types from the Russian classic Bed and Sofa to Emil and the Detectives and, especially, the Marx Brothers and Walt Disney. The frequent references to visiting News Theatres, to seeing cartoons and newsreels, recall an aspect of life between the wars now largely forgotten. As the horrors of the conflicts and invasions in Abyssinia, Spain and China mount up, Britten's mood grows pessimistic to the point that in March 1938 he writes: 'War within a month at least, I suppose & end to all this pleasure - end of Snape, end of Concerto, friends, work, love - oh, blast, blast, damn.'

Throughout the diaries there are intriguing premonitions of things to come. There is Britten's first meeting with John and Myfanwy Piper, future stalwart collaborators on many of his operas. In January 1933 he reads Henry James's The Turn of the Screw - 'an incredible masterpiece'. Above all, there is the beginning of his friendship with W H Auden, their first work together, and Britten's sometimes awestruck feelings of inadequacy where the poet is concerned: 'I always feel very young and stupid.' Britten's parents both died early, and there is the distinct impression of a lost soul, searching for a haven and a permanent relationship. The exuberant boy, playing tennis and ping-pong, rushing from concerts to cinemas to parties, plunging into new friendships - and sometimes just as quickly out of them - is replaced by a more wary character. When the great love of his life appears, he is unaware of it: 'Peter ... if he studies ... will be a very good singer. He's certainly one of the nicest people I know, but frightfully reticent.'

I can think of few other books that have given a more refreshing and enlightening picture of a personality that one already thought familiar. Britten's youthful character leaps off every page, and one feels the whole milieu of artistic and musical London in the 1930. It is not just a self-portrait of the composer as a young man, but a fascinating glimpse at an all-too-brief period of exciting discovery and innovation.