family and fiancée. As a test of
courage she dares him to spend the night in the haunted
room of the Wingrave mansion, Paramore. He does so, but
is found dead the next morning, his death brought about
by the strength of his own convictions. Britten’s opera
was originally commissioned for television by the BBC in
1967 and his original cast recording survives on CD (only
available now as part of a bigger set). However Britten
always said that the opera would work just as well on stage
and he supervised the first staged production at Covent
Garden. The Linbury Theatre at Covent Garden performed
it in April 2007, but the opera has seldom been revived
and a new production of Owen Wingrave is a rare
event indeed. Dramatically the opera isn’t as tight as
Britten’s other operas, and the overt pacifismSuspended jail sentence for man who burgled neighbours’ home

A 31-year-old man who carried out a drunken break-in at his neighbours’ home in Halifax has been given a suspended prison sentence.

Judge Jonathan Rose described Lee McDermott night-time attack on the Boothtown house in June as “mean and nasty” and promised to jail him for 16 months if he failed to comply with the terms of his suspended sentence.

Bradford Crown Court heard how the early hours burglary was captured on CCTV equipment in the area.

The footage showed McDermott taking a stolen £800 Samsung television back into his own home nearby.

At the time of the burglary McDermott’s female neighbour was asleep in bed and Judge Rose said she would have been terrified if she had woken up to find him in