Possibly the most colourful figure in the history of Western music, Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) was certainly the most eloquent. His autobiography is among the greatest ever written. Larger than life - like his massive works - Berlioz was a seminal figure in the Romantic movement and his book is both a personal testament and an account of his role in that movement. It tells the story of his romance with Harriet Smithson -with whom he fell in love when he saw her playing the part of Ophelia - and his even more passionate affairs with Shakespeare, Scott and Byron. Familiar with all the great figures of the age - Liszt, Wagner, Balzac, Delacroix, Weber, Rossini - Berlioz paints brilliant and often mordant portraits of them in a style which is one of the glories of French prose. Above all, this is the intimate and detailed self-revelation of a complex and attractive man, driven by his creative urges to a position of lonely eminence. The Memoirs of Hector Berlioz were translated some yea