Thirteen-year-old Alice Lawtham, although autistic and incapable of speech, possesses extraordinary self-taught skills at the piano and performs incredible feats of musical memory. Alice is a musical savant.

Now her enigmatic and intensely private existence is drawing attention from the world at large. Famous conductor Sir David Powys Hughes has stumbled upon some brand new pieces by Alice which bear the hallmark genius of the English composer Edward Elgar. How is this possible?

As a series of eerie 'supernatural' events unfolds in Elgar's home county of Worcestershire, Sir David becomes... more

When he died in 1934 Edward Elgar had become a National Institution, but his musical career was long over. This fictional memoir, supposedly written in 1934, takes us back to the years before 1914 when the composer's reputation was at its peak.

It tells the story of two young men who went to Hereford as pupils of George Sinclair, the cathedral organist and one of the friends immortalised by Elgar in the 'Enigma Variations'. They find that the composer, ill at ease in the circles to which his socially ambitious wife aspires, enjoys relaxing in the company of young people.

Apart... more