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“... to fool. Writing about Dylan, as against listening to him, is not easy and it’s useful to have Wilfrid Mellers’s ‘backdrop’ to Dylan, after his recent offerings, Twilight of the Gods, about the Beatles, Bach and the Dance of God and Beethoven and the Voice of God. For people without musical training, of whom this reviewer is one, the ...”

“... I first became aware of Professor Mellers when he lectured at Worcester College, Oxford in about 1962. The Beatles hadn’t got into the charts by then, so the theme of his lecture was probably Apollo, Dionysus and the Second Viennese School. It was very stimulating. I was particularly struck by the tiny flowered pattern on the tops of his (what I later came to recognise as) boxer shorts, which flashed into view when he gesticulated with particular energy ...”

“... restoration, the work remains the basis of Bach scholarship. It is an odd feature of Professor Mellers’s very odd book that he nowhere mentions Spitta, recourse to whom could have spared him and us many of the numerous errors that litter his pages. (More of this later.) Bach and the Dance of God, we are told, ‘makes explicit as never before the ...”

“... Century’. His next chapter on ‘Modern Times’ allows him to depart from the method, but even Wilfrid Mellers on ‘The Traditions of Popular Music’ proceeds largely from person to person. The trouble with this method is that the composer is rarely set against his background, the chosen works for listening are only loosely typical (why they are ...”

“... its contributors for the Penguin Guide to English Literature. Few friends, however loyal, escaped. Wilfrid Mellers, H.A. Mason and others all fell foul of him in one way or another. As to his enemies, the Lucases and Houghs and Tillyards, they could hardly be said to have betrayed him: they did the work of the devil in other ways. The relationship with ...”