Roderic Dunnett

Roderic Dunnett was educated at Uppingham School where he acted, played organ, piano and cello and sang countertenor. He won both a Classic and a Choral Scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he sang in the choir under Dr Bernard Rose. He taught Greek History and Literature, English and Music for fifteen years at King Henry VIII School, Coventry, where he formed close links with Coventry Cathedral Choir under David Lepine and Robert Weddle.

Since turning to full-time writing he has reviewed books and music for most British broadsheet newspapers, including The Times, Guardian, Financial Times and latterly The Independent, as well as The Times Literary Supplement, Higher, and Education Supplement. He was music critic of The New Statesman for five years, has been chief music critic of The Church Times since 1989, and has since written for a range of magazines, notably The Spectator, The Oldie, The BBC Music Magazine, The Strad, The Singer, Early Music Today, Opera, Opera Now and Opera News.

Roderic Dunnett has an ongoing special interest in rare repertoire and opera of the early 19th and early 20th centuries, and in modern British opera. He has presented some twenty programmes plus two major series, Britannia at the Opera and Eastern Approaches, for BBC Radio 3. He presented BBC Composer of the Week programmes on the life and music of Edmund Rubbra and the classical and Oscar-winning film composer Miklós Rózsa, and a two-hour archive tribute to his uncle, the BBC wartime newsreader and doyen of Radio 3 announcers, Alvar Lidell.

He has published biographies of Dvorák and Debussy, contributed extensive chapters on Arthur Bliss and Peter Maxwell Davies to publications at home and abroad, has written entries for The New Grove, MGG (Die Musik in Geschicht und Gegenwart) and Contemporary Composers.

He is a founder committee member of the Ivor Gurney Society. His hobbies include Slavs, Turks, Celts, Comparative Languages, two-humped camels, hillforts and Roman roads.