by John Simons
John Simons was born in Birkenhead in 1911, and spent his first eighteen months in Bishops Lydeard, Somerset, where his father's family lived. Later his mother returned to her native Australia to the gold-mining town of Ballarat, and it was there that he had his first music lessons. After the war his father left the Navy, and they all settled in Melbourne, where he graduated as a Bachelor of Music in 1931. He came to England the following year, and won the Woodward Smith Scholarship at the Tobias Matthay Pianoforte School.