Benjamin Britten’s varied output includes a number of works which set texts by W.H. Auden. Britten and Auden first met in 1935 when they were both working for the GPO Film Unit and they soon formed a highly productive creative partnership. On This Island was Britten’s first published group of songs with piano. A number of other Auden settings from this period, including the light-hearted Cabaret Songs, were published after Britten’s death. Lennox Berkeley came into contact with Auden’s poetry via Britten whom he had met in the 1930s. His settings, including the Five Poems op. 53, reveal him to be as sensitive and imaginative as Britten in his response to Auden’s verse.