Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The acclaimed English composer William Walton--enfant terrible of English music in the 1920s and '30s, composer of Façade, Belshazzar's Feast, and a host of other brilliant works--lived a long and accomplished life. Admitted as a nine-year-old Lancashire schoolboy to Christ Church Choir School in Oxford, he was discovered by Sacheverell Sitwell as an undergraduate at Christ Church, adopted by all three Sitwells, and early on discovered a publisher willing to back his unconventional music. He was, along with Ralph Vaughan Williams and Benjamin Britten, one of the giants of 20th-century British music.
In this moving memoir, Susana Walton has created an intimate and revealing portrait of this great English composer, recounting his entire career and their thirty-five years of marriage. The book brims with colorful anecdotes of some of the people who played a part in Walton's life, including the Sitwells, Laurence Olivier (for whose three Shakespeare movies Walton composed the score), Benjamin Britten, Maria Callas, Lord Kenneth Clark, W.H. Auden, Yehudi Menuhin, and Julian Bream. Packed with numerous photographs, many of which have never before been published, this charming volume offers many insights into Walton, the composer and the man.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Susana Walton, who was married to composer William Walton from 1948 until his death in 1983, has written a fascinating account of their life together. Her book is a collection of personal and musical reminiscences, rather than a scholarly or analytical treatise, and is very entertaining within that limited genre. The reader acquires a fine sense of Walton as a creative artist, working craftsman, exile (on the isle of Ischia in the Bay of Naples), and shrewd political infighter. In short, the portrait is well fleshed out, frank, and often quite sensitive. The author is least successful in her quasi-flashback narrative survey of her husband's early years and youthful successes (i.e., before he met her), and in her detailed commentaries on individual pieces (which do not add insight to commentary usually found in program notes). She is at her best, however, in dealing with personalities--the steady parade of distinguished figures with whom she and her husband came into constant contact. They are not always depicted at their best, and there are moments when one suspects that the thin line between oral history and gossip is about to be crossed. Nevertheless, when Hindemith, Britten, Previn, Piatigorsky, Huxley, Stravinsky, Olivier, Lucky Luciano, Osbert Sitwell, and Sir Malcolm Sargent cross the pages, the book is irresistible. A nicely chosen collection of photographs well complements the text. -E. Schwartz, Bowdoin College and the Ohio State University

Booklist Review

The author's account of her marriage to and life with English composer William Walton begins, in a sense, in media res since they did not meet until Walton was in his late forties and already famous. Starting with their meeting and courtship in Buenos Aires, the author sketches in the details of Walton's previous life before continuing her account of their shared existence as his international reputation grew. An ingratiating style and a great deal of intimately commonsensical observation add their own sparkle to this account of the composer's latter years. Moreover, the mixture of matters domestic, social, and musical reveals a charming relationship between husband and wife based on obvious mutual affection and respect over the couple's 35 years together. Index. JB. 780'.92 (B) Walton, William / Composers-England-Biography [OCLC] 87-24054

Kirkus Book Review

A loving memoir of one of England's great 20th-century composers, by his widow. A young Argentine beauty totally devoid of musical knowledge (""Not knowing anything about music,"" Walton once told her, ""is your only virtue""), Mrs. Walton met the much-older, already famous composer in 1948. She begins with an account of their courtship, and goes on to offer some deep insights into Walton's inner feelings about his craft. Despite a cushy life on the Italian isle of Ischia, Walton felt that for him to compose music was a more painful ordeal than a woman's giving birth to children. ""Symphonies are a lot of work,"" he told his wife. ""One has to have something really appalling happen to one that lets loose the fount of inspiration."" Mrs. Walton's anecdotes often amuse, as when Schoenberg becomes irked at being discovered actually composing at the piano, or ""Larry"" Olivier, describing to Walton a tune he'd just thought of, says, ""Now this is a beautiful tune I've thought of--dum de dura de dum,"" to which Walton replies, ""Yes, it is a lovely tune; it's out of Meistersinger."" There's also a bumbling appearance here by the womanizing conductor Malcolm Sargent, fumbling under Mrs. Walton's skirts as she tries to drive him home from rehearsals of her husband's Troilus and Cressida. Despite an occasional quirkiness, and a heavy penchant for dropping names, especially royal ones, Mrs. Walton's presentable, not too sychophantic remembrance, chock-full of musicdotes, will please most classical-music lovers. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

About the Author:
Susana Walton is the widow of Sir William Walton.