CYRIL Scott (1879–1970) had already been a friend of my mother, Yvonne O'Neill's, family for sixty-five years when I was sent to stay with him and his partner, Marjorie Hartston-Scott, at their home in Sussex in the spring of 1961. I was seventeen and it was the first time we had met. Cyril was of course part of the mythology of my childhood: his genius, his music, his unorthodox beliefs, his cloaks and wide-brimmed hats – all this I knew. So it was with some curiosity that I packed my bag and took the train to Eastbourne during the spring holiday from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, where I was training to become an actress.

My grandfather, the composer Norman O'Neill, had first met Cyril in Frankfurt, where both were pupils of the composer Iwan Knorr at the Frankfurt Conservatory of Music. My grandmother, Adine Rückert, who had been a pupil of the pianist Clara Schumann, had met and become engaged to my grandfather while both were still students there. Clara Schumann's death in 1896 required that Adine returned home to Paris – but her absence prompted a long correspondence between the engaged couple, exchanging news of the musical world in Frankfurt, Paris and London (now in the British Library).

Norman's first meeting with Cyril, in 1896, was actually recorded in one such letter to Adine:

That was probably the last time Cyril was so described. The regular English schoolboy was soon to be introducing my grandfather to the poet Stefan George (an hilarious encounter for Norman), writing poetry himself, and adopting the flamboyant costume that became his hallmark.

In 1897 my grandfather left Frankfurt and returned to London; but in the following year Adine visited her friends still studying at the Conservatory – sending a lively report back to Norman on the progress of Cyril and of his new friend, Percy Grainger.