‘Fascinating’ Tippett letter reveals composer changed by prison

Sir Michael Tippett in May 1971. He was jailed for two months as a conscientious objector. Photograph: Radio Times/Getty Images

He was one of the greatest British composers of the 20th century and a staunch pacifist who spent two months in Wormwood Scrubs as a conscientious objector to the second world war.

Now a previously unpublished letter written by Sir Michael Tippett in 1943 from his prison cell has been discovered and donated to the British Library.