Fame is a quixotic beast. It is an entirely mysterious process how and why some become household names while others often far more deserving vanish from the selective memory-banks of history. Few people now know who Edward J. Dent was, which is probably the way he would have liked it, since throughout his incredibly productive life he never sought celebrity however much he might have deserved it. After the Second World War, having seen through one of his lifelong ambitions, formal government support for the establishment of national opera, ballet and theatre as well as what became the Arts Council, Dent refused a knighthood from the Attlee government. It was a typical gesture, modest and perverse in equal measure; he knew his own worth. Briefly: Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and Professor of Music 1926–41, Dent helped to found and to run what became English National Opera, the Royal Opera House, the National Theatre, the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM), the International Society for Musical Research (ISMR), and was in on the establishment of the Arts Council. He helped found Musica Britannica; his editions of early opera, his translations of about fifty-six operas into English, his productions of The Magic Flute (1911) and The Fairy Queen (1914/20), beside his work on the earliest productions of the Marlowe Dramatic Society or Handel operas, rescued early works from obscurity. He researched and wrote the first biographies of Alessandro Scarlatti and Ferruccio Busoni, wrote seminal books on Mozart, on opera and theatre, besides hundreds of articles on musical and non-musical subjects. A founder member of the first gay rights organisation, the British Society for the Study of Sexual Psychology (BSSSP) in 1913, Dent was also a member of the British Academy; President of the Musical Association, the Philharmonic Society, the Purcell Society and the Liszt Society; a member of the Church Music Society; he helped to found the Drama League and the British Music Society; he was on the League of Nations music committee; and more.

But Dent's real genius was as a facilitator, providing the mind and energy underpinning some of the major cultural undertakings of the past century, while working behind the scenes or through his writings suited his subversive and mischievous spirit.