- published: 13 Sep 2010
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St Edmundsbury is a local government district and borough in Suffolk, England. It is named after its main town, Bury St Edmunds. The second town in the district is Haverhill.
The district was formed on 1 April 1974 under the Local Government Act 1972 (with the abolition of West Suffolk) by the merger of the Borough of Bury St Edmunds, Haverhill Urban District, Clare Rural District and Thingoe Rural District.
Until March 2009 its main offices were in Bury St Edmunds (Angel Hill and Western Way). Thereafter a purpose built complex, West Suffolk House housed both St Edmundsbury and Suffolk County Council staff.
In 2008 the Council submitted a proposal to the Boundary Commission which would see it as central to a new West Suffolk unitary council. Despite the considerable energies used to promote this concept the proposal was rejected and no unitary scheme for Suffolk was adopted. (For more details see also Suffolk.)
In October 2011 St Edmundsbury Borough Council and Forest Heath District Council agreed to have one chief executive, a shared management team and a combined workforce, creating initial savings of more than £2million.
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976) was an English composer, conductor and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British classical music, with a range of works including opera, other vocal music, orchestral and chamber pieces. His best-known works include the opera Peter Grimes (1945), the War Requiem (1962) and the orchestral showpiece The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (1945).
Born in Suffolk, the son of a dentist, Britten showed talent from an early age. He studied at the Royal College of Music in London and privately with the composer Frank Bridge. Britten first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy was Born in 1934. With the premiere of Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to international fame. Over the next 28 years, he wrote 14 more operas, establishing himself as one of the leading 20th-century composers in the genre. In addition to large-scale operas for Sadler's Wells and Covent Garden, he wrote "chamber operas" for small forces, suitable for performance in venues of modest size. Among the best known of these is The Turn of the Screw (1954). Recurring themes in the operas are the struggle of an outsider against a hostile society, and the corruption of innocence.