English composer, conductor and pianist Benjamin Britten, sailing uncomfortably close to the wind with his new opera Death in Venice seeks advice from his former collaborator and friend WH Auden. During this imagined meeting, their first for 25 years, they are observed and interrupted by, among others, their future biographer and a young man from the local bus station. Alan Bennett’s play is as much about the theatre as it is about poetry or music. It looks at the unsettling desires of two difficult men, and at the ethics of biography. It reflects on growing old, on creativity and inspiration, and on persisting when all passion’s spent: ultimately, on the habit of art.