Vaughan Williams lived through times of rapid social change, unprecedented violence – two world wars – and political determination in the aftermath of those wars to build a better world for their survivors. His hopes for the democratization of ‘high culture’, and especially for wider popular participation in music-making, were shared by other influential figures in Britain’s overlapping cultural and educational establishments, though not by everyone: there was an elite backlash, with ‘standards’ maintenance the declared point of contention. (Simple snobbery probably did have something to do with it.)

This chapter explores Vaughan Williams’s work for the cause of cultural democracy, places it in social and political context, and names his most determined opponents. It focusses particularly on his roles as a member of Britain’s Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts, set up soon after the start of the Second World War to help maintain civilian morale, and as a founding member of CEMA’s peacetime successor body the Arts Council of Great Britain.

Some serial lust killers suffer from erectile dysfunction in the context of a consensual relationship with a living human. In one sample of them, 44 per cent indicated erectile difficulties. It appears that some killers can only secure and maintain an erection, if at all, in the presence of a dead body, as with John Christie, or blood, as with Andrei Chikatilo. More speculatively, Robert Lee Yates Jr. also fits this description. It appears that John Christie was mocked for erectile difficulties. He viewed the body of his grandfather, which possibly had a role in the tragedy. It is possible that being gassed in World War I contributed to his pathological sexuality. Andrei Chikatilo is the most famous serial killer from the USSR. His early life in the Ukraine was associated with a multitude of different stressors. His erectile difficulties might have stemmed in part from bullying and taunting.

From mid-1943 until late-1950, Eric Crozier was an essential asset to Britten’s industry. His work alongside director and radio producer Tyrone Guthrie not only introduced Crozier to the Old Vic in London, but to the BBC as well, where Guthrie also worked. Joan Cross invited Crozier and Guthrie to each direct two different productions at Sadler’s Wells in 1943. Crozier directed and produced Britten’s first two operas, Peter Grimes in 1945 at Sadler’s Wells, and The Rape of Lucretia in 1946 for the short-lived Glyndebourne English Opera Company. Crozier wrote the librettos for Albert Herring and the children’s entertainment Let’s Make an Opera (with its central opera, The Little Sweep), in addition to writing the text for the cantata Saint Nicolas, and with E. M. Forster, he was co-librettist for Billy Budd. Britten, Crozier, and designer John Piper founded the English Opera Group. The endeavour was based on ‘the Britten–Crozier doctrine’ that sought the group’s own autonomy and ultimately a home to produce such works. That home was largely realised in the founding of the Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Arts in 1948, for which Crozier was a founder and co-artistic director.