Born in India, he was educated at Winchester and Cambridge, studying music with several prominent composers, before taking up a career as a critic.
[2] He was educated at the Dragon School and Winchester,[3] after which he took lessons in London, studying the piano with Ilona Kabos and composition with Mátyás Seiber.
[1] He was at Magdalene College, Cambridge from 1946 to 1948, studying with the composers Patrick Hadley and Robin Orr and the organist Hubert Middleton.
[2] Although the paper in the post-war decades was generally conservative and traditional, Mann was, as a colleague described him, "markedly progressive, even iconoclastic, in outlook.
"[1] In 1958 Mann contributed the libretto to Franz Reizenstein's Let's Fake an Opera, produced for the 1958 Hoffnung Music Festival.