n the Bleak Midwinter was composed in 1911 as a Christmas present for a friend. Christina Rossetti’s haunting poem with music by Gustav Holst had already been published in The English Hymnal of 1906, and it was not until Darke’s appointment as organist at King’s College Cambridge in 1941, replacing Boris Ord for the duration of the Second World War, that his version came to prominence through the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols broadcast annually from the chapel.

In 2010, ‘the 50 greatest...