Hailed as an infant prodigy, Peter Gammond was playing the gramophone at the age of three, revealing a natural winding action that was the admiration of all who beheld it. A well-known amateur through his years at school, in the army and at university, in 1952 he was at last persuaded to turn professional and joined a major record company.

Today, looking much younger than he seems, he is acknowledged as one of the country's leading gramophone players, equally at home in the various fields of popular music as he is in the classical world, and now as tasteful an executant in the electronic age as he was in the days of the 78. He also plays the piano, golf, tennis and fruit-machines.

He is the author of an excessive number of books on music. Most of them, as in the case of the present volume, have been compiled from the bits that zealous editors removed from earlier ones. Thus there is a remarkable uniformity about his work that many critics have eagerly noted. Most of all they provide a glimpse into the mind of a frustrated composer. Not many people know that he has written almost as many songs as he has books.

His wide non-musical interests include Indian curries, Evelyn Waugh, real ale, Offenbach, class-warfare, John Betjeman and Things. He lives in a ramshackle house in Middlesex with a fine view over a row of garages and an old-people's home. A contented recluse, he is known to few beyond the immediate circle of his doctor, lawyer, accountant, golfing friends, listeners to the radio and a handful of devoted readers.

Modern music
Modern music is that which is written in an idiom that came just after the period that any given music-lover was last able to understand.

Beethoven
Beethoven is regarded as a public company in which a number of people have shares and it is important to know how many shares each of them holds. Thus one talks of Klemperer's Beethoven, Karajan's Beethoven, SoltiÕs Beethoven, Bernstein's Beethoven and, after a bit of research, Furtwangler's Beethoven - those are main shareholders with Klemperer holding a working majority.

Bach
Any suggestion that you can take Bach as good clean fun can earn you a very nasty reputation. You must take Bach seriously or not at all.

Mahler
It was suddenly realised that Mahler had not written big long boring symphonies of the Brahms type which you have to listen to carefully from beginning to end in order not to miss the themes, but had, in fact, simply strung together hundreds of attractive little tunes, and it was possible to go into a coma for a lot of the symphony and still get involved when you came to again.

Bartok
Bartok is great stuff for people with the kind of mentality that takes naturally to chess and Ximenes crosswords.