At the time we met in London in 1970, Sir Neville Cardus was the British music critic personified. At eighty-two, his reviews were still appearing regularly in the Guardian, a daily paper to which he had contributed articles since 1916. Sir Neville, however, was also noted for his writings on cricket. In both capacities, music critic and cricket critic, he had spent the years between 1939 and 1947 in Australia, writing for the Sydney Morning Herald.

When I turned up for our interview, he was standing at the entrance to the building where he had an apartment in the basement. With legs wide apart, his paunch pushed forward and his ears protruding, he was like a young boy and was amazingly old at the same time.

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Neville Cardus (NC): I am convinced that critics are also artists. When I go to a concert, I record the aesthetic reactions evoked in me by the music. I write about music as my sensations dictate it and leave the public out of account. Of course, it is also our responsibility to report whether the performance was good or not. I would call it the news aspect of the review. If I do not like a particular detail of a conductor's performance, I do not criticize him for, say, choosing the wrong tempo in the first movement. I expect him to know more of tempi than I do.