Explores the 100 year history of the Norfolk and Norwich Operatic Society and celebrates the company's relationship with the Theatre Royal Norwich, one of the most successful major provincial theatres in the country. For One Week Only, published in time for the Norfolk and Norwich Operatic Society's centenary in January 2025, celebrates the company's relationship with the Theatre Royal Norwich, one of the most successful major provincial theatres in the country. The book charts the development of the Society over a hundred years of musical theatre, British and American. Each of the almost 100 productions has its own lively, informative and socially aware essay, accompanied by photographs revealing the development of the company from its origins in 1925, as well as showing the changing faces and styles of musical theatre throughout the century. The early years of the Society favoured such continental operettas as The Marriage Market and the bewitching Sybil before a long dalliance with Gilbert and Sullivan from which it broke free after World War II, although Iolanthe returned for her third outing in 1955. The Society's fascination with operetta continued through the 1960s with such sturdy favourites as The Student Prince, The Merry Widow and Rose Marie, with an occasional recognition of the British musical, notably in the 1975 production of Ivor Novello's King's Rhapsody and in the hugely successful Betty Blue Eyes of 2024. For One Week Only explores the history of the N&N and its ongoing contribution to the arts in Norfolk. Warmly and wittily, it lifts the curtain on a story of theatrical endurance and adventure.

The colourful lives of the three divas who made Debussy's Mélisande their own.

The first in-depth study of the ceremonial and music performed at British royal and state funerals over the past 400 years.

This long-awaited study of the life and music of Anglo-Irish composer Ernest John Moeran (1894-1950) finally provides a full biography of the last senior figure in early twentieth-century British Music to have been without one. Although Moeran's work was widely performed during his lifetime, he suffered neglect in the years following his death. It was not until a re-awakening of appreciation for the music of the folksong-inspired English pastoralism in the latter part of the twentieth century that Moeran's tuneful, well-crafted and approachable music began to attract a new audience. However, widely accepted misconceptions about his life and character have obscured a clearunderstanding of both man and composer. Written with the benefit of access to previously unknown or unresearched archives, Ernest John Moeran: His Life and Music strips away a hitherto unchallenged mythological framework, and replaces it by a thorough-going examination and analysis of the life and work of a musician that may reasonably be asserted as having been unique in British music history.

How do contemporary audiences engage with sacred music and what are its effects?

John Lehmann (1907-1987) was, for 50 years, at the centre of literary life in England. In this biography, his professional and private lives are brought together and re-evaluated.

This is the first biography of L. P. Hartley, author of The Go-Between, The Shrimp and the Anemone, Eustace and Hilda, The Hireling, and many other well-known novels. Adrian Wright had exclusive access to Hartley’s private papers, many of which were subsequently destroyed. Much that was thought undiscoverable has been revealed: Hartley’s childhood; his relationship with his mother; his experiences in the Great War; his various lives in Venice, Bath, and London; and his struggle to come to terms with his homosexuality.