On this page we have provide links to articles and information that we hope is of interest to anyone interested in England, our History and Traditions.
We have split this into two sections for ease of use. All articles and information provided will abide by our strictly non-party political stance.

England, Kingdom, Commonwealth

This section is for articles that we couldn't include in our Journal, St. George for England  plus any other information relating to England and the Commonwealth.

• England and the English by Rudyard Kipling

At the Festival Dinner of the Royal Society of St. George on the 23rd April 1920 in the Connaught Rooms, London, the Chairman Rudyard Kipling gave this speech.

• Podcast - Cornwall and the RSSG Anniversay Banquet

Stuart Millson takes us on a journey to Cornwall and then talks about the Society's 130th Banquet.

• A British Arctic Symphony

When most people are asked to think of an English composer, the names of Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Parry come to mind ~ Parry, especially, for members of The Royal Society of St. George, who have just voted to make his Blake setting ~ Jerusalem ~ the Society anthem. Yet the musical establishment seems to have completely forgotten the name of a young Englishman who composed some of our most graceful, finely-crafted and intriguing music of the romantic genre: Walter Leigh.

• Anglo-Saxon — ‘a source of English pride’

The Banner of St. George

In this section we will provide relevant ‘campaigning’ pieces or news-links, or information from like-minded groups.

• NORTH DOWNS BRANCH IN KENT COMMUNITY ACTION INITIATIVE

Wing Commander Mike Sutton has been leading the North Downs Branch in a number of local community initiatives.

HERITAGE OF ENGLAND

Music of the Isles

Stuart Millson introduces a pageant recently-recorded English and British music.

Volume 3 of the Chandos series, Overtures from the British Isles, sees Rumon Gamba bringing into the limelight a whole host of curtain-raisers and mini-tone poems that have, for whatever reason, faded from view. How often, these days, do we hear Havergal Brian, Richard Arnell, Alan Rawsthorne or Daniel Jones? Repackaged by the technology of modern recordings and with new life breathed into them by a sure, suave, sophisticated orchestral sound, we begin to wonder this music does not feature as a normal part of the concert or Radio 3 output. The BBC Philharmonic in its Salford studio pulls out all the stops in Havergal Brian’s The Tinker’s Wedding Overture, relishing Brian’s often eccentric compositional style – humorous, magical, Gothic all rolled into one. From the England of 1944 comes Alan Rawsthorne’s Street Corner, a piece that does in fact obtain the very occasional airing on an oldish Lyrita record, made by the London Philharmonic and John Pritchard – a lively performance; yet it is good to hear the work in full digital detail courtesy of Chandos. The action and atmosphere (for me) suggests one of those great old 1940s or ‘50s films, set in Soho, or some risky part of the metropolis; and a scene filled with actors such as Sidney James or Sydney Taffler, with the rumbustious life of London played out to the full. 

An olde worlde view

Four years later, Robin Orr’s overture, The Prospect of Whitby, conjured an olde worlde dockside London, and the famous pub that witnessed the river traffic and trade of the Thames – and the execution at the beginning of the 18th century of the pirate, Captain Kidd. Kidd’s Scottish heritage undoubtedly appealed to the Angus-born composer, who went on to play a leading role in music education in Britain; and with conductor, Sir Alexander Gibson (Scottish National Orchestra, Scottish Opera), an initiative to champion contemporary music north of the border.

Richard Arnell’s overture, The New Age, was performed about ten years ago at the English Music Festival, and I doubt if I have heard a note of his music since then. So the inclusion of the work in this collection is welcome, and sheds some light on a man who, just before World War Two, believed that there was no hope for Britain or the Old World, and made his home in the United States. The overture was played at Carnegie Hall two years before America entered the war, and seemed to show the radical new side of English music. Arnell, however, seemed to have a touch of fondness for this motherland across the ocean, and dedicated the work to his “friends in England”.

The music of Welsh composer, Daniel Jones, was last heard at the Proms in 1982, the (then) BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra performing his Dance Fantasy. Jones, a friend of Dylan Thomas, was present for the performance, but despite his extensive symphonic and chamber output – Chandos recorded a landmark set of his String Quartets – his name is not well known to audiences. Again, this needs to be remedied, and what better way to give the Pembroke-born composer the recognition he deserves than by playing the 1942 Comedy Overture, so expertly handled here on the new disc by Rumon Gamba. Yet this is no raucous romp, or harlequinade, but a surprisingly understated work: wry humour and observation, very much to the fore, with a Welsh sea-breeze gently filling the sails of this six-minute-long miniature delight. 

Bliss – former Master of the Queen’s Musick

Music by Bliss, next: the 1944 ballet set in the backstreets of Glasgow, Miracle in the Gorbals – a piece with all the disembodied, jagged social scenery that you find in Berg’s Wozzeck – suicides, prostitutes, strangers and streets paved with danger. Conductor, Michael Seal (himself once an orchestral player) brings the score to dazzling life in a thrilling performance with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra in Salford. Chandos sound-engineers win yet again with their state-of-the-art sound, which serves well the late masterpiece by Bliss, his 40-minute-long Metamorphic Variations (1972 – first given in 1973 under the baton of Vernon Handley), which begins with an unforgettable, brooding Larghetto Tranquillo movement – the dark saying of the opening oboe line setting a scene of profundity, but which is later dispelled by more disjointed, faster themes. 

From BIS recordings, Britten’s Diversions for the Left Hand (1940, revised 1954), the Tippett Piano Concerto (1953-55) and Walton’s Sinfonia Concertante (1927, but revised 16 years later) make a triumphant trio of important, but – strangely – neglected British works. In the hands of Clare Hammond, one of our most admired pianists, these exciting concerto pieces reveal not just the genius of their composers, but (like the Bliss and Vaughan Williams mentioned earlier) the style and form of a whole golden era of our music: the unique fusion of nostalgic lyricism and light – especially in the Walton – interwoven with dynamic, often stretched tonality; and in the Britten and Walton, an intricate embroidery of variation upon variation, of abstract ideas, which somehow managed to sound as though they have been drawn, as if by water-divining magic from the fen, meadow and megalith landscape of England.

(This article is drawn together from a number of reviews, first published in The Quarterly Review.)