How we became a nation of choirs and carollers

Between the ages of 15 and 17 I had a secret. Every Monday night I’d gulp down dinner before rushing out to the scrubby patch of ground just past the playing fields, where a car would be waiting. Hours later — long after the ceremonial nightly locking of the boarding house — I’d sneak back, knocking softly on a window to be let in.

I’d love to say that it was alcohol or drugs that lured me out. It wasn’t even boys — or, at least, not like that. My weekly assignation was with Joseph and Johann, Henry, Ben and Ralph. My addiction? Choral music.

Better than some and worse than many, the Calne Choral Society was exactly the blend of lino floors and plastic chairs, too-strong cups of tea on unsteady trestle tables and past-their-prime tenors that you could have found in any hall in the country. But it was my Royal Albert Hall.