WHEN I LEFT SCHOOL, I went to the Hampstead Conservatoire and had piano lessons first from Hilda Weber, and later from her father, Carl Weber, then one of the foremost pianoforte teachers of the day. I adored my lessons and practised for hours daily, but never reached anything approaching a professional standard. My mother then insisted on my halving my piano lessons – ‘You will never be anything but second rate,’ she said, ‘but you HAVE got a voice’ – and taking singing lessons from Henry Beauchamp. At that time I considered that playing the piano was ‘real’ music and that singing was just a social accomplishment. I was definitely unhappy at this enforced change in my musical education.

My mother was right. With first-class training I progressed very rapidly and at nineteen won the gold medal at the London Academy of Music – an institution long defunct.

The years of the war interrupted concentrated work and during the last two years I was a full-time VAD. I had many opportunities for singing ‘in public’ – though I had to sing ‘popular’ songs. Even so, I tried to book a lesson from Mr Beauchamp whenever I could find time.

After the war I felt I wanted to broaden my very conventional outlook, and early in 1920 I deserted Mr Beauchamp for a time and paid for two courses of lessons with Signor Manlio di Veroli, the well-known teacher in London. On many points we disagreed.