This volume brings together all the travel diaries of Peter Pears (1910-1986). The first diary dates from 1936, the year before Pears's friendship with Britten began, when he went on tour in North America with the New English Singers. Other diaries record the five-month tour of the Far East and important encounters (especially for Britten) with the gamelan music of Bali and the Japanese Noh theatre; visits to Russia as guests of Mstislav Rostropovich and his wife Galina Vishnevskaya; attendance at the Ansbach Bach festival when Pears was at the height of his career; holidays in the Caribbean and Italy, a concert tour of the north of England, and accounts of the rehearsals and performances of the New York premieres of `Billy Budd' and `Death in Venice'.

The diaries, rendered in Pears's highly individual prose, reveal much of his cultivated personality and add significantly to knowledge of Britten. They have been scrupulously annotated by PHILIP REED, formerly at the Britten-Pears Library, now at English National Opera.