The music critic Felix Aprahamian was a remarkable self-made man – an amateur who became a professional – whose enormous influence in musical circles was deeply rooted in his practical experience of promoting music in London, notably music by British and French composers. Felix long aspired to write his autobiography, and indeed he was informally assured of publication by the publisher John Murray, but without either a contract or, more importantly, a deadline, he never got round to it. He was enormously proud of this prospect – ‘Byron's publisher’, he would tell one – but sadly, despite the prompting of many friends, it remained a chimera. However, Felix's story of a life in music over three-quarters of a century is worth telling for its own sake, for the light it throws on music and musical life – particularly in London – over these years, and for the unique insights he brought regarding those composers in whom he specialized, many of whom he had known personally.

We are fortunate that the mere three pages he completed of his autobiography tell his family history. He was the son of an immigrant Armenian family – his father, Avedis Aprahamian (who had been born Hovanessian), was naturalised at the turn of the century. Felix lived until the end of his life in the family home in Muswell Hill, London, to which they moved on 1 January 1919, not long after the scare his parents had experienced when Felix contracted that great childhood killer of the time, diphtheria. Felix wrote: