Taking Stock: The First Sixty Years

The author of these memoirs spent the last ten years of his working life as a Lay Vicar of Westminster Abbey; he sang at Princess Diana's funeral and gives an insider's account of the events surrounding the dismissal of Martin Neary, Organist and Master of the Choristers, in 1998. He writes, too, about hsi time as a choral scholar of King's College, Cambridge, and with the choirs of Winchester and Guildford Cathedrals. His chapter on composing explains the genesis of his well-known Responses.He has also been a poet, translator and the author of a book on A E Houseman. He taught English for twenty-seven years and has a life-long love of cricket. He writes with perception and humour about a great number of people. He writes, as he says, to preserve things - and to try and make sense of it all.