As teacher, broadcaster, author (The New Music, published in 1924, was a landmark in twentieth-century English criticism), administrator and public figure, Sir George Dyson played an influential role in British musical life for nearly fifty years. He was a Yorkshireman of working-class origin who owed none of his success to birth or influence. He won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music in London where he studied with Stanford and responded wholeheartedly to Parry. During the Great War his Manual of Grenade-Fighting was officially adopted by the War Office. (It was typical of his exceptionally keen and resilient mind that whatever circumstances forced him into doing he did well, even if it was killing Germans.) After the war he resumed his career of public-schoolmaster; his last and happiest appointment was at Winchester (1924-1937), the city which he came to regard as his spiritual home and whither he retired after completing fourteen years as the Director of the Royal College of Music. It was at Winchester that most of his best music was written, including the works on this compact disc.