Richard Graves
British singer, broadcaster, writer and composer Richard Harding Graves was born in Knaresborough, Yorkshire in June 1926. His long professional career covered a wide range of activities. He was perhaps best known as a broadcaster, especially as a regular presenter of BBC Radio Three's Mainly for Pleasure series. He also worked for a time as a BBC music producer, with responsibility for clarinettist Jack Brymer's daily At Home programmes. Richard also made innumerable radio and TV appearances as a singer of Victorian popular songs, on which he was a recognised authority.
Richard Graves (1926-2002)
For many years he contributed widely to various music journals on a variety of subjects, including a fascinating series of nineteen articles entitled By the way, published during 1999 and 2000 in Music & Vision Magazine.
He travelled extensively as an experienced examiner and adjudicator, in the UK and abroad, and, during his last years, he divided his time between Sri Lanka, where he presented music programmes for the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation, and home in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, UK.
Composition, editing and arranging always took up much of his time. His music includes TV and radio commissions, church music, part-songs, and piano and instrumental pieces of many kinds.
Richard Graves died in Sri Lanka in April 2002, aged seventy-five.
Articles by Richard Graves
'A first-world-war eccentric'
'The first screen musical?'
'British melodies'
'Happy Christmas!'
'What do you think of that?'
More voices from the pit
Verdi's full house
Voices from the pit
A tight-laced soprano
Viola Players
A Murderous Lyricist
Roses of Picardy
Molto Dolente
First Verse
What's in a Name - or Neyme?
The Street-Singer
Macabre Dance
In The Shadows
The Real Colonel Bogey
Its strange history is explored