Grand Old Sod

Paul Driver

• The Selected Letters of William Walton edited by Malcolm Hayes
  Faber, 526 pp, £30.00, January 2002, ISBN 0 571 20105 9
• William Walton: Muse of Fire by Stephen Lloyd
  Boydell, 332 pp, £45.00, June 2001, ISBN 0 85115 803 X
• William Walton, the Romantic Loner: A Centenary Portrait Album by Humphrey Burton and Maureen Murray
  Oxford, 182 pp, £25.00, January 2002, ISBN 0 19 816235 9

Malcolm Hayes tells us that the letters he has selected are merely a quarter of a fifth of those so far available, but one would not want the volume longer. William Walton is no prose stylist, not much of an anecdotalist, and his letters reveal remarkably little about him. They are nearly always utilitarian – money, advice, favours to be sought, contracts to be finalised, parts to be corrected, a libretto to be endlessly rejigged, practicalities of life on an Italian island to be discussed – and not infrequently duplicitous. Writing a self-confessed ‘fan letter’ to Britten about the premiere of Peter Grimes, he is also shooting off a note to the copyist Roy Douglas asking: ‘Did you see or hear “Grimy Peter”?’