Lancashire-born English composer who started writing while he was a chorister at Christ Church, Oxford. Largely self-taught, he had early success with a String Quartet. He wrote for a variety of different mediums. His Façade is a collection of of instrumental pieces to accompany the spoken recitative of poems by Edith Sitwell.
His cantata Belshazzar's Feast requires huge forces. There is a strong rhythmic sense to his music matched, none the less, by a lyricismand an English character.
In his later years he lived on the island of Capri
