Gordon Jacob was born in Upper Norwood, South London, in 1895, a tenth child and a seventh son. He was educated at Dulwich College, which was an unusually musical school, and he wrote his first orchestral pieces there. During the First World War he was captured by the Germans near Arras, and in his prison camp organised a small orchestra whose entire repertoire he arranged or composed. This early practical approach to music was to remain a hallmark, and his music is always eminently 'playable'. After the war, having decided against a career in journalism, he entered the Royal College of Music, where he studied composition with Stanford, Howells and Vaughan Williams, conducting with Boult, and piano with Thalben Ball. Two of his books, 'Orchestral Technique' and 'How to Read a Score', are still much used and highly valued by students throughout the English-speaking world. He died in 1984.