Benjamin Britten lived his entire life obsessed with the concept of family, and was known for creating surrogate units around himself wherever he went. “There were families that Britten devised and then depended on to facilitate and fulfil his work: the companies that staged his works, and in particular the managements of the English Opera Group and the Aldeburgh festival. But there were many times in the later 1940s and 1950s when the conduct of these surrogate families was overshadowed by frustrations, jealousies and even thinly disguised homophobia.”