Sir Thomas Beecham By Neville Cardus

All books are second hand

Neville Cardus first heard Sir Thomas conduct in Manchester in 1912; in 1931 he met him over a white lady at Salzburg in the company of Lady Cunard. Their association spanned the greater part of this century, their friendship some thirty years, and when in 1958 the question of a biography of Sir Thomas came up, he commented that were it to be written, it would be to Neville Cardus that he would turn.

It was not written, but what we have here is in some ways more appropriate. This book is a memoir, a portrait, almost an evocation of this extraordinary man, written by an old friend and admirer who, through all the years of friendship and controversy, never lost his affection or his critical integrity. Cardus writes of him as a man and as a musician, as the last of the dandies who none the less belonged entirely to the nineteenth century and remained at bottom a Lancastrian, born at St. Helen’s. He was not so much a wit as a wag, and the famous stories which are told of him lose much of their flavour unless they are seen as the response to a living situation by an artist in comedy.