William Walton's life was an unusual kaleidoscope of places and styles. Born in Oldham, Lancashire of a musical middle-class family, he won a place as a junior chorister to Christ Church, Oxford. He went straight from there to Oxford University as a music undergraduate, where he met the hugely talented, upper-class Sitwell family. On leaving Oxford, he went to live with the Sitwell family in London - and stayed for 15 years! This gave him the material security to gradually develop his career as a composer. Later in life he fell in love with the country and people of Italy, where he moved with his Argentinean born wife, and ended his days at Ischia.

His works are quite small in number - he found composition slow and laborious - but the quality of the resulting works is invariably very high. In addition to the oratorio Belshazzar's Feast, his orchestral output includes two symphonies, concertos for viola, violin and cello, and a number of overtures and occasional works. The latter includes the coronation marches Crown Imperial and Orb and Sceptre.

Walton's work for the cinema dates from the years before and during World War II. He wrote for 14 films in total, many of them versions of Shakespeare's plays. The last film he worked on was Battle of Britain, his music for which was largely rejected in favour of an alternative score by Ron Goodwin. He was furious about this, and never returned to the movies.

His collaboration with Laurence Olivier began in 1936, when he wrote a score for a film version of 'As You Like It', directed by David Lean and starring Olivier and Elizabeth Bergner. 'Henry V' followed in 1943, with a stormy Olivier producing, directing, and taking the lead role. As usual, Walton found writing the music hard work. "How does one distinguish between a cross-bow and a long bow, musically speaking?" he once asked in despair. But Olivier was delighted - "William knocked out the most fantastic score for Henry V; why it didn't win every award throughout the film industry I'll never know, because it's the most wonderful score I've ever heard for a film." The film was hugely successful on its release, being just the right blend of quality, tradition and patriotism for the national mood, as the tide of war was beginning to turn, and an Allied victory began to look increasingly sure.

Tonight we are playing four movements, from a suite adapted by Christopher Palmer. After a short prologue for the whole orchestra, the interlude 'Touch her soft lips, and part' is for strings alone, and comes from one of the more tender moments in the play. The third movement, Agincourt, depicts the battle itself: the charge of the mounted knights is realistically depicted, but whether you can distinguish the cross bows from the long bows is debatable! The medieval sounding tune in the closing Epilogue is the famous 'Agincourt song', a popular song from the 15th century celebrating the victory at Agincourt.