More book reviews please!

Many thanks to the two people who have reviewed my book on Amazon and Lulu, both of whom have kindly given me a five-star rating! It has also been favourably reviewed in the latest edition of the journal of the Vaughan Williams Society. I am also expecting a review to appear in the next issue of Church Music Quarterly, though I don't yet know if that will be favourable!

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Sussex hymn-tunes - Part II: KINGSFOLD

A while back I started to write about hymn-tunes that are named after Sussex place-names. Having been briefly diverted by an expedition to Suffolk and Essex, I am now back home and ready to think again about the tunes that grew near where I live. The first instalment of my post on Sussex hymn-tunes focused mainly on tunes that Ralph Vaughan Williams collected from Harriet and Peter Verrall in Monks Gate, just outside Horsham. Vaughan Williams lived not far away, in Surrey, and many of the folk-songs that he adapted for use as hymn-tunes were collected in Sussex. So if you will indulge me, I will stay with RVW in this entry too. I live in Warnham, a village just outside Horsham, diametrically opposite from Monks Gate. There is a hymn-tune called WARNHAM, but only because I wrote it myself. It was my entry for a competition run by the Royal School of Church Music to mark the 150th anniversary of the publication of Hymns Ancient & Modern . The competition challenged composer...

Forest Green

FOREST GREEN is the name of the tune sung (in the UK, at least) to O little town of Bethlehem . Since this is the carol from which I have taken the title for my book (and this blog) I thought I should look into it. The tune is a folk-song called The Ploughboy's Dream , which Ralph Vaughan Williams 'collected' in 1903. Vaughan Williams noted that the singer from whom he learnt this song, Mr Garman of Forest Green, was a native of Sussex but living in Surrey. Thanks to Mr Simon Coombs of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society , I have learnt that RVW collected this song at a place called Broadmoor in Surrey, and that he also heard songs sung by one Isaac Longhurst on the same occasion. Here's a map showing Broadmoor: View Larger Map I have tried to find out some more about Mr Garman of Forest Green. Vaughan Williams estimated his age to be about 60. By consulting the census records I have discovered the following: There is only one adult Mr Garman reco...

SLANE

I have not often been to Ireland, I am sorry to say, but whenever I have it has been a delightful experience. The first time was in 1984, when as a newly-graduated fresh-faced lanky youth I did a sailing trip starting and ending in Poole and taking in the Channel Islands and Brittany as well as Baltimore in the south-west of Ireland. Since then I have visited Dublin a handful of times, and visited places along the east coast including Howth, Dún Laoghaire, Wexford and the wonderful Carlingford Lough, right on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. In each case I have arrived by sailing boat, which perhaps contributes to the fact that the experience was in every case a delight. The profile picture of me that you can see on this blog was taken in Dublin. It is my first and - to date - only selfie. The expression on my face is a mixture of satisfaction with the haircut I have just had, and frustration with the fact that my friends insisted on eating at a pizza restaurant,...

O Little Town

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