As a schoolboy of 15 at Eton, Philip Heseltine—known to all lovers of English song as Peter Warlock—developed an interest in the music of Delius that was soon to become a consuming passion, without having heard a note of it in performance. "And although I have heard nothing of his music," he writes to his mother, "yet from what I can discover at the piano, I may say that so far as I have yet found, Delius comes nearest to my own imperfect ideal of music...." By chance, his mother, a society lady, was to meet Delius on the occasion of the London premiere of his Songs of Sunset conducted by Thomas Beecham. Heseltine attended on June 16, 1911, and was introduced to the composer during intermission. An intense and ever more personal correspondence followed, through which Delius gradually assumed the role of father figure.

By 1923, in full swagger as Peter Warlock, Heseltine wrote the first book on Delius, perfervid, polemical, and poetic by turns, full of inaccuracies (though he was born in 1862, the composer's birth date is given as 1863), but highly readable and useful in helping define Delius' style while divining the shape of a career still in progress.

In the same year, Heseltine completed the Serenade for String Orchestra, dedicated "To Frederick Delius on his 60th birthday"—as noted, Delius was actually turning 61—in which the fluently dreaming style of Delius at his most ecstatic graciously melds with the more angular gait of Peter Warlock. Already in the grip of the syphilitic paralysis that would leave him blind and unable to compose, on February 26, 1923, Delius dictated this missive: "My dear Phil, Forgive me for not answering your kind letter of congratulations and acknowledging your charming serenade, which I received early in the morning on my birthday to my greatest surprise and pleasure. I like it very much indeed; it is a very delicate composition of a fine harmonist...Percy Grainger and Alexander Lippay played me the Serenade several times from the score and they all liked it."

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