1951, Festival of Britain Years, saw the first performance of Vaughan Williams' "Pilgrim's Progress". It was conducted by Leonard Hancock, one of the music staff, a fair, good-looking young man, so quiet and relaxed that Beecham asked in a loud aside after meeting him for the first time: "Does he breathe?" Vaughan Williams had announced rudely and publicly that he did not want "any of the Opera House hacks" to conduct his work but it didn't really matter who conducted it; as Kleiber said when I asked him his opinion of it: "Nothing much you can do with it, is there?" It just went on and on in a pleasant, undramatic way. << less