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Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote some of the most profound, serious, affecting and individual British Classical music of the last several hundred years.

His distinctive pastoral style often drew on folk idioms out of his love of the English landscape like Surrey where he spent his formative years. But that was just one side to his creative character and his lyricism, which whilst tender, has gravity and bite. For so many men of his generation Williams was powerfully affected by WW1.

From stretcher bearing drills on the Surrey Hills to witnessing the desolation on the battlefields of France, these places and events shaped his music and added depth and shade to an already complex musical personality.

Writer, broadcaster and RVW devotee, Stuart Maconie tells the story of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ War.