An interview published as ‘Talking with Lennox Berkeley’ in Poetry Nation no. 2 (1974), reprinted by courtesy of Carcarnet Press Ltd. C. B. Cox was an academic, writer and editor, finally John Edward Taylor Professor of English Literature at Manchester University; Alan Young was Head of the Department of Arts Education at Didsbury School of Education, Manchester University; and Michael Schmidt is the poet, novelist, critic and Professor of English in the University of Glasgow; he founded and directs Carcanet Press, based in Manchester. The three interviewers, whose contributions are not differentiated, began by asking questions about Berkeley's early musical experiences.

lb I didn't go to concerts very much when I was a child. It was only when I went to Oxford as an undergraduate that I began to take an interest in live music. It was at Oxford that I began to compose, without knowing quite what I was doing, or how to set about it. I did write music there, especially songs, but even then I hadn't learnt anything about how to write music; that came later.

q Do you remember any of those early works?

lb I set one or two French poems, and I remember that one of the first English poems which I set was by Auden whom I knew well at Oxford. He was a bit younger than me, and I think my last year there was his first. The song was performed at a sort of private concert by Cecil Day Lewis who had a very nice light baritone voice. That was another lifelong friendship that started at Oxford.