Bonnie and I had been hankering for some time after a move to “the country.” Graham Fawcett had left Southern Arts and moved with his wife, Bodie, to live in a farmhouse in Tuscany. We visited them there, found the atmosphere beguiling, and discussed with them the possibility of finding a country house for all four of us, together with our recently born babies, to live in. We suggested France rather than Italy—a suggestion that in retrospect I find incomprehensible—and rented a house near Toulouse to serve as a base for our search.

It was lucky that we had the experience of living in the same house with Graham and Bodie, even if for only a week, because it quickly became apparent that we were incompatible as sharing couples. They would thunder up and down the stairs, whereas we were basically quiet people; and Bodie, having polished off every one of her meals at lightning speed and wanting to clear the table forthwith, would look at me and say, “You do eat very slowly, don't you, Bernard!”

So, having amicably agreed with the Fawcetts to abandon the plan of cohabitation, Bonnie and I started to look northward rather than southward, and we very soon settled on the market town of Wymondham (pronounced “Wind'm”) near Norwich in the East Anglian county of Norfolk as our next place of residence. We found a beautiful and spacious house on the edge of the town, and moved into it in the autumn of 1976.

My study was on the third floor (“second” in British usage, where the ground floor doesn't count), and what with my view of a field full of horses and cows, the majestic copper beech in front of the hotel across the street, and the twelfth-century Wymondham Abbey next door to it, concentrating on work was not easy. I buckled down as well as I could, and over the next three years produced many reviews of concerts and opera productions all round East Anglia for Classical Music Weekly, liner notes for several record companies, and my first two books: The Music of Johannes Brahms and Conductors on Conducting.