‘Scallop’

Benjamin Britten was adamant that he did not want any memorial sculpture of himself in Aldeburgh, the Suffolk coastal town where he lived for 30 years. He died in 1976 and he is remembered there by the Britten-Pears music school and Snape Maltings concert hall, by John Piper’s magnificent window in the church, and at the Red House, where Britten lived, which contains his entire library, art collection and musical archive. A bronze bust standing on the seafront was neither needed nor wanted. But the Suffolk artist Maggi Hambling was greatly inspired by Britten’s music, and especially his opera Peter Grimes, and in 2002 she had the idea of designing a tribute. Its form — that of a scallop shell divided into two parts and standing upright, came to her immediately.

And now there it is, rearing up from the shingle on the stretch of beach between Aldeburgh and Thorpeness along which the composer walked almost daily.