Susan Hill: The brilliance of the NHS cancer service

Exactly 50 years ago I drove, for the first visit of many, across country to Aldeburgh in Suffolk, following the Pied Piper, Benjamin Britten. I had been obsessed by his music, and indeed by him, since first hearing the ‘Sea Interludes’ from his opera Peter Grimes in a music appreciation lesson. His sound worlds, his persona, the place he both lived in and recreated in his work, spoke to me in a way nothing else ever has. As I drove in, past the church to see the sea, the Moot Hall, the fishing boats, the shop where he had bought china mugs to string in a line and tap with spoons for the sound of raindrops in Noye’s Fludde, I felt the real, everyday world and his imaginative one interlock. That first visit is etched in my memory. I stayed in the White Lion Hotel for three nights, a luxury I could ill afford.