[1] While still a schoolboy, Bernard met Benjamin Britten when the composer came to consult the school's art master, Kenneth Green, about the stage designs for Peter Grimes.
During the war, Bernard worked with the team dedicated to breaking the code of the German Enigma machine, specialising in deciphering intercepted Japanese messages.
In 1950, Britten asked him to copy out the full score of his new opera Billy Budd for his publishers Boosey & Hawkes,[4] inviting him to stay at his home in Aldeburgh.
Paul Dehn, by now a writer and critic, asked Bernard to collaborate with him on the original screenplay for the Boulting brothers film Seven Days to Noon (1950).
[6] Bernard also sought Holst's assistance when writing incidental music for a broadcast radio production of The Duchess of Malfi, which starred Richard Burton, Peggy Ashcroft and Paul Scofield.
He also scored non-horror Hammer films such as The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), The Stranglers of Bombay (1959), The Terror of the Tongs (1961), The Damned (1963), The Secret of Blood Island (1964), and She (1965).
A distinctive trait in Bernard's Hammer scores are their use of clashing harmonies, often created by doubling a motif a tone higher, as in his Dracula theme.
He also wrote the score to Paul Cotgrove's 2001 short horror film Green Fingers (starring Hammer actresses Ingrid Pitt and Janina Faye).