Elevating Elgar

Edward Elgar was so revered in his home country England that his picture adorns the back of the £20 note. “Yet a recent YouGov poll found that three-quarters of British adults were unable to recognise his portrait on the back of theirs. They were more likely to say the man with the droopy moustache was the imperialist Lord Kitchener than England’s greatest home-grown composer since Henry Purcell.” A new initiative aims to raise Elgar’s profile.