Andrew Cooper writes:

>This seems a bit off to me.  Britten is dead, so it should be
>possible to say whatever one likes about his activities without fear
>of being sued even under the draconian British libel laws.

Indeed so - but it is vital to protect the identities of the boys involved.
 Their privacy is sacred, and must remain so.

 So,
>Bill, did Britten cut up 10-12yo boys and put them in suitcases?

Certainly not - but he was caught up in the investigation of the people who
*did*.  And it was *one* boy; as he is dead, there is no real harm in
naming the unfortunate Bernard Oliver.  A little respect for his memory
would not go amiss, by the way. The police uncovered a large-scale juvenile
pimping operation centred on a house in a Suffolk village (Tattington)
owned by Ronnie Kray (the twins had huge property interests in East
Anglia).  Some of the boys were obtained via a close friend of Britten's in
London, who named him as one of the beneficiaries of the "service": other
"customers" included Lord Boothby (who frequently shared boys with Ronnie
Kray himself) and the record producer Joe Meek.  At least two other people
died in the aftermath of Bernard's murder as the twins sealed up the leaks.

 Is
>it really true that if he actually did fancy under-age boys he
>engaged in any sort of sexual behaviour with them?

Nobody would become involved even on the edges of a caper like the
Tattington Ring for any other purpose; the Krays were not exactly the
Rotary Club.

Stan Ulrich writes of my original post:

>THAT post was disingenuous in a Joe McCarthy sort of way, I thought

I'm sorry, but I'm not having this.  McCarthy persecuted the harmless and
the innocent - and there was nothing remotely harmless or innocent about
the events (or the people) surrounding the death of Bernard Oliver.  At
best, it was a nightmarish example of how good people (and Britten was a
very good man) can be drawn into appalling evil by tragic personality
flaws.  There was also nothing remotely funny about it.

> Frankly I don't care
>whether Mann did it or Britten did it or Inspector Japp of the Yard did it.
>I don't care if Britten turns out to have been Jack the Ripper.

Nothing funny *at all*, in fact.


Bill Murphy