At 42, already an established name in British music, Ralph Vaughan Williams volunteered as a stretcher bearer in the First World War, hauling wounded men through the mud of France in work that would permanently damage his hearing. This episode follows the late-blooming composer from a privileged Wedgwood and Darwin family background through his long search for a distinctly English voice, one built on Tudor choral music and vanishing rural folk songs.

The conversation explores his lifelong friendship and ruthless peer review with Gustav Holst, his clashes with teacher Charles Villiers Stanford over German-style walls of sound, and why studying orchestration with Maurice Ravel in Paris helped him sound more English, not less. It also covers the misunderstood grief of A Pastoral Symphony, the dissonant Fourth Symphony, the unconventional house ...