Edward Sackville-West, 5th Baron Sackville

Who was Edward Sackville-West, 5th Baron Sackville?

Edward Charles Sackville-West, 5th Baron Sackville was a British music critic, novelist and, in his last years, a member of the House of Lords. Musically gifted as a boy, he was attracted as a young man to a literary life and wrote a series of semi-autobiographical novels in the 1920s and '30s. They made little impact, and his more lasting books are a biography of the poet Thomas de Quincey and The Record Guide, Britain's first comprehensive guide to classical music on record, first published in 1951.

As a critic and a member of the board of the Royal Opera House, he strove to promote the works of young British composers, including Benjamin Britten and Michael Tippett. Britten worked with him on a musical drama for radio and dedicated to him one of his best known works, the Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings.