Thanks for sharing a very interesting article, aaaa. 

I've read a lot about Benjamin Britten lately, and it appears that there are many who would like to tar and feather him with some revisionist history, with innuendo about him being a closeted pedophile.  You can't change the fact that a man has talent and produces lasting works of art, though, and sexual preferences shouldn't even be an issue, except in understanding how they can sometimes be the inspiration for fantastic creativity and expression.

It seems from this article (I'd never read any of this) that Benjamin Britten was deeply affected by the sadder elements of childhood just as much as he was by the innocence and fantasy of childhood experience.  I think he'd have a whole new spectrum of sadness to deal with if he was here to experience society's attempts to deny men and boys deep emotional attachments to each other nowadays. 

Love,
Sir J

That book at those second set of links does look interesting, aaaa. 

Here's what one of the links said about the author:

<i>Pierre is like a grown-up version of his eponymous 15-year-old hero, Vernon God Little. His linguistic felicities (he refers to one disliked playmate as an "egg sac of a critter" and to himself as a boy of "big ole puppy-dog features like God made me through a crappity smacken magnifying glass") have been compared in their venom to Eminem, in their humour to South Park and in their explosive, colloquial poetry to Rabelais. As with Little, Pierre knows what it's like to experience "90 flavours of trouble riding on his ass," having been addicted to cocaine and run up such huge debts that he ripped off a friend to the tune of £30,000. Winning the most prestigious literary award in the country worth £50,000 will not counter the lesson of Pierre's past 20 years: that life is "a hard bastard" and "we should count ourselves lucky for just about everything, including drawing breath."</i>

I think I'll like his writing.

Love,
Sir J

hear the author being interviewed.

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It's amazing that a journalist in today's society would have the courage to write this:

<i>From the testimony of the boys it seems clear that he could have been a molester, and was not. We should understand that this is possible. We should weave understanding into our treatment of the borderline paedophiles in society.</i>

I sure hope I'm able to see this BBC documentary someday.  Thanks for telling us about it, apple. 

Love,
Sir J

discussed on bbc radio programme tonite - thursday.

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while everyone's waiting - in a state of heightened tension - for revelations re ben's filmic fulfillment - here's some amusing extracts from the biography :

<i>some of britten's own tastes were still that of a small boy.

he loved jig-saws and at easter 1931, when he was seventeen, wrote in his diary :

"it's good to get back to sweets after six weeks of lent"!...

when he heard a broadcast of <u>tannhauser</u> in june 1932 he was disappointed by the soprano who sang the role of the shepherd lad - "why not a boy for this?"

and he was sufficiently attracted by robert graves's poem `lift boy` with its evocation of boyish carelessness ("nothing in my pockets but a jack-knife and button"), to make it one of a pair of part-songs he composed during 1932.</i>

lift boy :

Let me tell you the story of how I began:

I began as the knife-boy and ended as the boot-man,

With nothing in my pockets but a jack-knife and a button,

With nothing in my pockets but a jack-knife and a button,

With nothing in my pockets.

�@

Let me tell you the story of how I went on:

I began as the lift-boy and ended as the lift-man,

With nothing in my pockets but a jack-knife and a button,

With nothing in my pockets but a jack-knife and a button,

With nothing in my pockets.

�@

I found if very easy to whistle and play

With nothing in my head or my pockets all day,

With nothing in my pockets.

�@

But along came Old Eagle, like Moses or David,

He stopped at the fourth floor and preached me Damnation:

`Not a soul shall be saved, not one shall be saved.

The whole First Creation shall forfeit salvation:

From knife-boy to lift-boy, from ragged to regal,

Not one shall be saved, not you, not Old Eagle,

No soul on earth escapeth, even if all repent-'

So I cut the cords of the lift and down we went,

With nothing in our pockets.
_______________
before commencing the britten biography i read james knowlson's  life of samuel beckett.

here's an entertaining extract; interested persons can detect a a <U>CLUE</u> to ben's favourite film - cuz the youthful protagonist of that movie sort-of follows in the footsteps of the great investigator mentioned below :

<i>frank was headboy or senior prefect and in charge of our dormitory.

he had his own little room or cubicle.

one night he was supposed to have checked that we were all in bed.

and i had gone into a friend called Gamble's bed.

i knew nothing about sex at the time.

it was to tell him a conan doyle story.

the headmaster, seale, came in with a torch in his hand and found me in bed with this other boy.

of course, it was his bed.

so i was the guilty one.

seale had me in his room the next morning and asked me what i was doing in Gamble's bed.

i told him i was telling him a story.

"a story, what story?", he said.

so i told him it was the sherlock holmes story, <u>the speckled band</u>

he gave me six of the best for my trouble.

"that will teach you not to tell stories", he said.</i>

[`six of the best` is brit colloquialism for six strokes of the cane - when sado schoolteachers were allowed to administer corporal punishment.]

it's almost tomorrow now - so here's the amazing news

ben's favourite movie was emil and the detectives.

the original 1931 version.

there were three subsequent remakes.

childactors's link below is about walt disney version.

he also liked "the man who knew too much" because of nova pilbeam - "a little darling...so lovely to look at".

although nova was a girl

the second major movie he liked was <u>poil de carotte</u> - because of "glorious" robert lynen.

according to imdb there seem to be a lot of remakes of that too.

there's a dramatically premature end to robert's life - see french link.

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for those who aren't fluent in french, i append below a machine translation which provides the gist of the web page.

it would take me too long to personally cobble together a decent translation.

i'm tired.

the book only came out a couple of years ago; i don't suppose there's an english translation.

google search for book.

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__________
CHARLES (François), Life and dead of Carrot Hair. Robert Lynen , actor and resistant. 1920-1944, The Blue Cloud, Strasburg , 2002, 220 orderlies.

François Charles, Life and dead of carrot Hair. Robert Lynen, actor and resistant 1920-1944, The Blue Cloud, Strasburg, 2002. In this year where the national Competition of the Resistance and Deportation concerns the engagement of the young ones in the Resistance, the work of François Charles, devoted to one of the " resistant young " the most famous one, falls to peak. Sacred child prodigy of the French movie to 12 years, for his incarnation of the hero of Jules Fox in the adaptation of Duvivier, Robert Lynen knows a heroic and tragic destiny during the occupation: it is involved himself as early as 1940 in the clandestine action to Marseilles, then becomes agent of the network Alliance of Bride madeleine Fourcade. In 1943, his destiny tips: it is stopped at the same time the whole sector marseillais of the network, tortured, transferred in Germany, condemned to death and executed in April 1944.

The big one deserve this biography - the first one that is consecrated for him - is to give us the keys to understand this traverses exceptional. Not that his resistant itinerary be it: of young others of his age, as Philippe Viannay or Serge Ravanel, will see entrusted themselves national responsibilities in the clandestine organizations, without commune measures with this that one knows activities sum all " ordinary " liaison agent Lynen: anthology of pieces of information on the occupying, mail transportation and of émetteurs-récepteurs, recruitment. But to the cœur of this moving destiny , there is the question of the engagement, an engagement remarkable by his precociousness.

Classical question for the first rebels of 1940, that were only a handful : how do they trouvèrent-ils in them moral even the springs to drag itself from general despondency? She puts herself doubly in the case of a " child star " movie ÿ - the film of Duvivier had had an international success, of the " clubs of fans " had constituted themselves to Japan! - Of which the career was again some to become.

After the shooting of two other roles of child (The small king, Without family), Robert Lynen, enter into the adolescence, had been able to unhook only some first roles in very secondary films, except maybe The Small Thing of Maurice Bell, and apparitions fugitives in two œmajor uvres (The Beautiful Equipe, Dance Notebook). The occupation could offer to him - she the fit for all a new generation of actors - the timeliness to be done a place to the sun , profiting from it recreation thirst of the French obsessed by the scarcities, air call created by the exile or the exclusion of already consecrated talents, and, eventually, juicy contracts of the German Continental firm. What the poussa therefore to refuse all (except shooting Épisodique of two films minors, no financed by the Germans) and to risk his life?

The explanation holds a lot to the so unique history of the family Lynen. Placed in appearance under the sign of a " life of bohême " away from the realities of the era, she reveals herself to the examination carrier of experiences more complex , deeper and stronger that certainly prepared the young man to confront the major choice of his existence.

His father, of alsatian origin, loosened the industrial drawing to traverse europe on foot while painting. In 1905, it embarked himself for the United States , where it met the soul on, Mildred, also artist (song and piano ) and voyageuse as him. After five years of pérégrinations to two, they had the luck to secure itself friendship with a rich heir of the even soaks that them - indifferent to money and crazy in love of art - charles-james Onimus. Accommodated in one of the onimus villas on the azure Coast, living of sale of pictures and of piano lesson in a worldly environment and artist , they had two first children, Edgar and May.

The friendship of the trio rests on choices deep lives. In 14, lynen-père and Onimus assume all two the same option antibelliciste: the one does to reform itself and tries to work with the Red Cross, the other is involved itself as nurse. After the war, the Lynen abandon without soul state worldly life for student of the goats and cows in a farm jurassienne to Nermier , that onimus puts at their disposal. This is there that Robert passes the three first years of his life, to the narrow contact of the nature; and his education will remain unique, even after the return of the family to Paris. Lynen-père is itself determined to loosen partially his paint for the industrial drawing, in order to make his family live, but Robert will not go to the school before 9 years, his mother assuring his apprenticeship.

One cannot prevent oneself from think that the personal choices of the parents, this manner to be indifferent to the social position, to accept a goes out favorable material or no, provided that it leaves entire the liberty to devote itself to its passions, infused very early with Robert. Recruited by chance for Carrot Hair (it had just been registered by his mother to the school of the Children of artists and not never nothing had turned), it seems to have lived his film career of child prodigy with a total, exempt detachment of all cabotinage. What one some judges by this dialog with Louis Jouvet, that was his partner in 1938: " You know it my small Robert , that you are bad as a cow? - Oh yes, m'sieur Jouvet. - And you yourself in crazy? - Oh no, m'sieur Jouvet, but me, the movie, that does not have fun me. This that I like, this is the camping ".

The anecdote , retrieved by the scriptwriter Carlo Rim, is not harmless; its former friends indicate the recurrent distance that it will post with regard to the trade of actor, in spite of an evident natural talent. Robert looks for itself Really: to 16 years, the moment a first role to the theater was proposed for him , it tried to run away to be involved itself as foams on a boat to Rouen. The uncertainty on his deep being worsens itself of the two family dramas under the sign of which ones it grew. In 1925, Edgar,le brother elder, dead east of an injury to the poorly cared one for knees. Ten years after, this is his father that committed suicide, doubtless despaired to begin losing the view and to meet eternal money problems.

This from that time his brother-in-law Rock Henneguier, married to May, that plays a little the role of family boss and, with respect to him, of elder brother. Henneguier maintained with Robert the family taste of the nature and trips, while the taking to camp and go boating " on all the France rivers ". But this is also him that the brought back Rouen, to the moment of his attempt of runs away. At last, Henneguier is, on the eve of the war, journalist to tonight, aragon the newspaper, support of republican Spain.

What his brother-in-law be for Robert an instigator or a model becomes evident during the France country. Robert wants to follow them in the frank body where Henneguier carried itself voluntary - in vain, evidently, seen his age. Also when, after armistice, Henneguier musters some friends to Marseilles for " to do something ", Robert wants right away some to be.

At first , one gropes: thanks to a friend banker, the small group creates Azure Transportation , a transportation corporation by trucks, that it hopes well to do to serve to clandestine activities. The group succeeds in conceal weapons , does to pass pieces of information to the the one father of them, Reemerged Gimpel, linked to the Polish network F2, broadcasts the clandestine leaf The small Wings of the movement " National Liberation ", that Maurice Chevance did for him to know. All happens again in a semi-clandestinité sort : the anesthetized atmosphere of the free zone encourages to little to hide its sympathies , by desire to meet at last others rebel as much as by provocation.

The year 1941 east a turn for Robert: after having been called for the Youth Work-sites in the spring, it chooses to the fall to be part of the theatrical turns of John Rock Aumont. Economical reasons, first: Azure Transportation is not very profitable. Maybe also does it perceive as the henneguier initiative attained its limits, including from the viewpoint of the organization and clandestine activity? In December 1941, it learns the arrest of his brother-in-law and the dismantling of his group; it interrupts immediately his turn. Henneguier quickly will be liberated, but entretemps, Robert will have pulled , all alone, the lesson of this first period. It seizes timeliness that offers him the network Alliance, conscious to integrate henceforth a clandestine structured organization , linked up directly to London and able to employ it to multiples missions on the whole territory.

Each of the two friends will follow henceforth separately the destiny that it chose themselves, squarely cause knowledge. The one of henneguier will bring it to succeed in 1944 certain ones of the most important sabotages of the parisian region, at the head of the frank groups of the military Delegate Rondenay. The one of Robert Lynen will drive it to the death, after to have it without any doubt revealed to himself.

Bruno Leroux