INTRODUCTION

Berkeley wrote his diaries with some reluctance. He obviously found he was short of time for composition, and more than once in these extracts wonders whether it was worth while to keep this kind of record. It certainly was, for the light it throws on Berkeley's life in his final years. We read of his visits with Lady Berkeley to Monaco and elsewhere, his connections with the Royal Family and Prime Minister Edward Heath, and follow Berkeley's travels round Britain to attend or take part in performances of his music. Most of these occasions are recorded in appreciative terms. He was increasingly cherished by performers as he became an elder statesman of British music.

Another aspect of the diaries is that they reveal Berkeley as a devotee of opera, which he attended regularly and of which he was an experienced and well-informed critic. He was struggling with a new grand opera when the diaries peter out in the early 1980s. It was to have been called Faldon Park, with a libretto by Winton Dean, a close friend and eminent Handel scholar. Sadly it was at about this time that Berkeley became severely handicapped by the onset of Alzheimer's disease, so he was denied the chance of competing with his admired Verdi, who wrote Otello and Falstaff in his late seventies.