Gordon Jacob was born in Upper Norwood, South London, in 1895, a tenth child and a seventh son. He was educated at Dulwich College, which was an unusually musical school, and he wrote his first orchestral pieces there. During the First World War he was captured by the Germans near Arras, and in his prison camp organised a small orchestra whose entire repertoire he arranged or composed. This early practical approach to music was to remain a hallmark, and his musicis always eminently ‘playable’. A...