Celebrating British Music: Donald Macleod explores the life and work of the 'quintessentially English' composer, Edward Elgar, whose musical roots lay firmly in Europe, and whose Catholicism and class background bequeathed him a lifelong sense of isolation from mainstream British society.

Today's programme has a royal thread running through it. In 1911, Elgar was commissioned to write music for the coronation of George V. He fulfilled his commission but a last-minute bout of depression kept him, and his bemused wife and child, away from the ceremony, where they were to have been honoured guests. Elgar's symphonic study of Shakespeare's Fat Knight has divided audiences. He considered it his orchestral masterpiece; others find its reputation enigmatic. Show less