Michael Kennedy is the doyen of writers on English music of the last one hundred and fifty years. His scope is wider than that, as books on Mahler and Strauss testify, but it is his works on Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Walton that accord him this rank.
For many years he worked for the Daily Telegraph and was its Northern Editor from 1960 to 1986. He became its joint chief music critic in 1986 and in 1989 became chief music critic of the Sunday Telegraph. He retired in 2005. For his services to music he was appointed OBE in 1981 and CBE in 1997. He received the honorary degree of Doctor of Music from Manchester University in 2003, in 2004 became the second recipient of the Vaughan Williams Society’s Medal of Distinction and was elected an honorary member of the Royal Philharmonic Society in 2005.