Edward Downes Edward Downes Sir Edward Thomas ("Ted") Downes, CBE (17 June 1924 – 10 July 2009) was an English conductor, specialising in opera. He was associated with the Royal Opera House from 1952, and with Opera Australia from 1970. He was also well known for his long working relationship with the BBC Philharmonic and for working with the Netherlands Radio Orchestra. Within the field of opera, he was particularly known as a conductor of Verdi. He and his wife, Lady (Joan) Downes, committed assisted suicide at the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland on 10 July 2009, an event that received significant media
Joan and Peter education of Peter and also of Joan, a child of Dolly's brother born out of wedlock and entrusted to them. Phoebe and Phyllis are devoted to the suffragette cause and undertake their guardianship with enthusiasm, but Lady Charlotte, "one of those large, ignorant, ruthless, Low-Church, wealthy, and well-born ladies who did so much to make England what it was in the days before the Great War," abhors their values. She schemes to christen Joan and Peter, then plots to remove the children from the faddish "School of St. George and the Venerable Bede," based on the ideas of Froebel and