This important 2004 biography of Elgar draws on letters & documents which became available in the preceding twenty-five years. Michael Kennedy a leading scholar of British music & a distinguished musical biographer uses this material which
Includes:: Elgars own vast correspondence in an attempt to get to the centre of the composers complex personality. Elgars letters reveal his unpredictable swings of mood from gaiety & a fondness for puns to morose self-pity & a feeling that he was not wanted & although much of Elgars music sounds confident & coherent it also has an underlying layer of unease melancholy & insecurity. His relationships with his wife & other women friends are a continuing thread in the life of a man who remained acutely conscious of his lower middle-class origins in spite of his meteoric rise to fame honours in Edward VIIs reign & friendship with the King.