‘We are, after all, queer and left and conshies (conscientious objectors)’, Pears wrote to Britten in 1963. They were, in other, words, outsiders – “beyond the pale” – like the mythical fisherman Peter Grimes, the subject of Britten’s first, sensational opera. Britten in particular was in a difficult position. In the 1950s a police crackdown on homosexual activity had produced a rash of prosecutions, and Britten himself may have been called in for questioning. Yet at the same time he was rapidly becoming the most celebrated composer in the UK, the man to go to, for example, if you wanted a piece of music to mark the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral. The result was Britten’s incredibly moving War Requiem, performed in the Cathedral in 1962.

In the 1940s the couple had settled in Aldeburgh, in Suffolk, and they were to remain in this area for the rest of their lives. Britten wrote to Pears around that time, ‘My darling, I think of you every moment – my life is inextricably bound up in yours …’. They were still together – and still declaring their love for each other – in December 1976, when Britten died. By then the performance of one of his last works, ‘Death in Venice’, had ensured that he would be remembered as the composer who had almost single-handedly re-instated opera in the musical life of Britain.