George Dyson touched almost every sphere of musical life during his long, colourful career. He was one of the most outstanding musical educators of his time, working for many years in some of our greatest schools, helping to educate the nation through his regular radio broadcasts, and served as Director of the Royal College of Music. He was passionate about improving amateur music making throughout the country, founding the National Federation of Music Societies and becoming President of the Rural Schools Music Association. His important work with the Carnegie UK Trust, of which he eventually became Chairman, brought him into contact with politics at the highest level, and the evidence of his wide-ranging skills made him an obvious choice as a regular member of the BBC Brains Trust panel. But it is through his compositions that we, at this distance, can know and love George Dyson, who gave us a canon of works, great and small, to enjoy. It is the task of this book, as much as anything else, to bring this music alive to a new generation who are now becoming aware of the riches and variety of British music of this period.

I ended my biography of Herbert Howells with a quotation by Hugh Ottaway which I have used many times to illustrate what I regard as being one of the most clearsighted comments about early twentieth-century British music; it applies equally to George Dyson: ‘The strength of the music derives from its impeccable style, from the mode and quality of thought within the idiom.