Grainger helped to shape Taylor's career

It's certainly a fascinating part of England with many interesting stories.

I'm sorry that my one line reference to Percy Grainger and Joseph Taylor's meeting seems to have upset Laurence.

Grainger's (pictured) choral arrangement of Joseph's folksong Brigg Fair is still a concert favourite and is not to be confused with the later Delius piece that Laurence obviously prefers. That's just a matter of taste.

Given more space I could have described Joseph as many things apart from a shepherd. Over a long and hard-working life Joseph did many jobs to scrape a living including labourer, carpenter, farm steward, and even a competition singer.

Laurence also chooses to attack Percy Grainger for not paying Joseph anything for his tunes.

We cannot know for sure if that is true but Percy certainly paid more than once for Joseph to visit him in London and entertained him there.

He publicly acknowledged Joseph as the source of the songs at concerts and other performances.

Indeed in 1908, at the first London performance of Delius's Brigg Fair, Percy brought Joseph down to London specially for the performance.

Percy, Delius and Joseph sat together in the best seats.

On hearing his tune, Joseph immediately stood up and began to sing along with the orchestra.

Neither Percy nor Delius made any attempt to stop him.

Why should they? This was Joseph's proudest day.

I do agree with Laurence on one thing. Bill Leader did us all a favour when he made the original Joseph wax cylinder recording available again.

In fact I was listening to my 1972 vinyl version while writing the original article.

Peter Frost

Braunston