However, such considerations had to change after the rise of Hitler, whose approach to German hegemony and to the human race made Wilhelm II's look benign and enlightened. It is hard to make a case for the Second Reich being a threat to Britain in 1914. It was a war we could, and should, have sat out. That option did not exist in 1939. It was by the grace of God and a shoal of public- and grammar-school boys in Spitfires and Hurricanes that we were not overrun after the Fall of France. Some public-school boys, however, chose to head for the safety of America: Auden and Isherwood, followed by Britten and Pears, who came back in 1942. I suspect none would have been much use in the Armed Forces, though Pears's cricketing ability showed some martial spirit. But that wasn't the point. This was total war, for the first time in our history. Teenagers who were little more than children were making a contribution; so too were women, all putting their lives in danger. Of course it would have been a catastrophic loss had Britten been killed, just as it was when George Butterworth was scythed down in 1916. But for someone who had already achieved the renown he had to run up the white flag, and run off, was a shocking error of judgment.

 I have no idea whether he was a coward. He certainly wasn't as brave as Michael Tippett, who believed in pacifism so strongly that, unlike Britten, he refused to do any war work at all, and went to prison. Perhaps he was stupid, as some men of high principle are. Hitler had already demonstrated — and this was well known in Britain in 1939 — that leftists and homosexuals had no place in his Reich, and could expect persecution and, quite possibly, death. Had Britain been invaded, where would that have left Britten? We must expect he believed in the right to practise his own sexuality (even though it was illegal at the time) and to hold whatever political opinions he chose. What would have happened to him had the Nazis come? Why did he consider this a battle that was best left to others, including women and children, to fight, while he went off to be adopted by some rich and kind Americans?

I wonder, when he went to Belsen with Yehudi Menuhin in 1945, and saw what the tyranny he could not bring himself to oppose had done, whether the superiority of his status as a sublime artist meant very much to him. He was deeply moved by what he saw there. I wish I could have the chance to ask him exactly why. Life cannot always be separated from art. I feel no excuses can be made for him: he was wrong to go away for those three years, with his country and its culture in mortal danger, and his decision to do so must be an everlasting stain on his otherwise massive reputation.