AFTER THE Wessex debacle the Goodalls lived in a rented house in Chelsea, 78 Sydney Street. Eleanor found work at a school in Croydon, but all Goodall could get was the odd job at one or other of the music colleges. The London he had known before the war had changed irrevocably. As a result of the bombing St Alban’s, Holborn, was a ruin, as was Queen's Hall. Covent Garden opera house was being used as a Mecca dance hall. Many of Goodall's former colleagues were in the Forces; some had been killed. Reinhold von Warlich was dead. In November 1939 he had committed suicide in his estranged wife's New York apartment. To the surprise of his pupils, it turned out that he had been an American citizen since the first world war. The prospect of another war between his adopted country and the homeland of his forefathers had proved more than he could bear.

Orchestral concerts in central London were confined to Saturday and Sunday aft ernoons, but there were at least four of them each weekend. In addition the LPO gave Sunday evening concerts at its new home, the Orpheum cinema in Golders Green. Programmes were far from adventurous, but audiences were on the increase. There were now more opportunities for promising British conductors than there had been before the war, for they faced little competition from foreign visitors. Goodall, however, found it impossible to find conducting work, in spite of the experience he had gained with the Wessex. He always maintained that his pro-German sympathies militated against him during this period, which is no doubt true, but he also failed to grasp a major opportunity when it was presented to him.

A month before Goodall left the Wessex he was given a Sunday evening date with the LPO in Golders Green by his old supporter from St Alban's days, Felix Aprahamian, who was now assistant to the orchestra's secretary, Thomas Russell. With Beecham, the LPO's founder, away in America, the orchestra was constantly on the look-out for new conductors, and Goodall was in eff ect being auditioned.