Paul Spicer

Born in humble circumstances in The Forest of Dean, Howells held posts at Salisbury Cathedral, the Royal College of Music, St John’s Cambridge and St Paul’s Girls School. He was taught by Brewer, Stanford and Parry; a fellow student of Gurney and Bliss; a friend of the poet de la Mare and of composers such as Vaughan Williams and Finzi. Behind the outstanding compositions and a career in the ’establishment’ lay a life-threatening disease, the death of Howell’s nine year old son, and a forty-year period of mourning. There also lay personal insecurities: vanity, social climbing, an all-consuming attraction to women. Paul Spicer views these flaws with the same honesty and integrity he applies to his assessment of Howells’ music.

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