Many grateful thanks to Fred Tomlinson,

Dr Barry Smith,

Robert Beckhard and Alastair Chisholm, for their assistance and support.

'Peter Warlock - Some Little Joy', is a film which concentrates on the Eynsford years in the 1920's, when the composer E.J.Moeran shared a cottage with Warlock, and introduces the society of friends and fellow artists who played important roles in Warlock's life, and his close personal relationships.

One of England's finest songwriters, greatly influenced by the music of

Elizabethan composers, Quilter, Delius, Van Dieren and Bartok, Warlock is one of the most significant figures of the early 20th Century, not only as a songwriter, but also as a critic, scholar, and music editor.

As John Goss, in the film Giles sings key Warlock songs, including Captain Stratton's Fancy, The Cloths of Heaven and The Frostbound Wood.

The film begins in the present day at a meeting of The Peter Warlock Society , then time lapses back to the 1930's on the day the cricketers and musicians drank the local inn dry.

The film was shot on location in Norfolk, 2005.

  CAST includes -

  Philip Heseltine/ Peter Warlock - Mark Dexter

  Winifred Baker - Georgina Rich

   Barbara Peach - Lucy Brown

  Puma - Maimie McCoy

  John Goss - Giles Davies

  Heseltine's Mother - Gabrielle Drake

  E.J.Moeran - Richard Dempsey

  Hubert Foss - Ben Elliot

  Colley - Sani Muliaumaseali'i

  Bruce Blunt - Simon Butteriss

  Bernard van Dieren - Alastair Boag

  Harry Cox - Peter Coleman

  Augustus John - Simon Masterson Smith

  Lord Berners - Edward R Hicks

  Pianist - Tony Britten

  Chairman - Julian Forsyth

  Singer - Dan Gillingwater

  Landlord - Ian Jervis

  Mary Lincoln, Nigel Riches

The definitive biography of Warlock's life and times is by Barry Smith, and available from Oxford University Press. Also by the same author - 'Delius and Warlock, a Friendship Revealed', (OUP) and the Complete Collected Letters. (Boydell and Brewer)

It has been Tony Britten’s dream for a long time to direct a proper profile on Peter Warlock. He assembled a stunning cast led by

Mark Dexter as Philip Heseltine (Warlock), Mamie McCoy as Puma, Lucy Brown as Barbara and Georgina Rich as Winifred and shot this 90 minute biopic entirely on location. With ingenious means Tony Britten brings to life the pre Second World War England and shows us what a gifted composer this great song writer was.

Tony Britten on Warlock:

Since I was a child I have loved the music of Peter Warlock, as a boy treble singing his carols and later as a tenor attempting to do justice to his art songs. And art songs they are, comparable to the emotional precision of Schubert and the atmospheric imagery of Debussy. By the time of his death at thirty six Warlock had composed some of the most perfect gems of English song writing, and elevated hedonism to an art form.

Peter Warlock was the pseudonym of Philip Heseltine, one of many that he used throughout his short life. Much has been written

about a split personality between the quiet, bookish Heseltine and the roistering Warlock, together with conjecture regarding the

manner of his death. Nothing has been proven, adding greatly to the potency of a musico – dramatic film treatment. In less than two

decades Warlock turned out an astonishing amount of work, both musical and literary. Add to this the consumption of legendary

amounts of his adored English ale, serial womanizing and general high living, and the question is begged as to how he survived

to the age of thirty six! The film will concentrate on the period from 1925 until his death, by gas poisoning in 1930.

The first three years of this time were the final flowering of his gifts, both compositional and social. Together with the Irish composer

Moeran, Warlock rented a cottage in the Kent village of Eynsford. There he set up a bohemian ménage with a highly eccentric Maori

factotum, numerous cats and elderly motorcycles – two of his other obsessions. Into this madhouse came many friends such as

Augustus John, Lord Berners and Constant Lambert, who mixed happily with a bevy of bucolic locals, and a constantly changing selection of lady guests. Warlock displayed many eccentricities. In addition to a life-long search for the perfect pint of beer, he would,

with little encouragement break into Nijinsky – like improvised dances, as well as the more scholarly activity of being a monumental

thorn in the side of the music establishment. Although his mood swings became more pronounced towards the end, his mercurial temperament suggests a man well versed in using his excesses as a smokescreen for serious and passionate music making. However, his final move to Chelsea in 1929 coincided with a deep despair concerning his creative abilities, a despair possibly heightened by a disillusion at his miniaturist status.

What is particular y intriguing for an international audience is Warlock’s championing of composers such as Delius, Bartok and the

now forgotten Dutch composer Van Dieren. Although Warlock’s music is assumed to be quintessentially twentieth century English,

he had a deep understanding and love of many earlier Europeans such as Gesualdo, as well as the English folk tradition and the Elizabethans. This combined with a pathological dislike for the musical conventions of the day suggest that his place in musical history is as much European as British.

John Goss - Singer/ Writer/ Editor - Notes by Giles Davies (2006)

The baritone John Goss, (1891-1953) was a close friend to Warlock and other composers of the inter-war years. One of the few

artists to champion new British music and traditional British Folksongs, Goss alongside Warlock was also responsible for the revival

of the Elizabethan and Jacobean English lute song. He was adored by the composers whose music he championed, for his musical panache, charisma and versatile voice, which he would lighten and adjust in the manner of a folksinger with a tenorial quality in ballads, where as in art song he used a wide colouristic vocal range, and a warmer baritonal timbre.

He studied with singing teacher Rheinhold Von Warlich, who also taught the French baritone Pierre Bernac, friend and colleague

of Poulenc.

With his own group, the Cathedral Male Quartet, he recorded for HMV, in a wide repertoire of Folksongs, Ballads and Shanties.

As a scholar he edited an ''Anthology of Song'', ''Ballads of Britain'', and wrote a wry, satirical novel during his time in Japan, ''Cockroaches and Diamonds''. During the war years Goss lived in Vancouver, Canada, regularly broadcasting and teaching singing.

Over the last year, during work on Tony Britten's new film and since, I have made a study of Goss' repertoire and his recordings from the 1920's, and have devised my own tribute to John Goss programmes. This breathes new life into much of the finest neglected English repertoire from the inter-war period, including songs by Delius, Van Dieren, E.J.Moeran, Rebecca Clarke, Warlock and Peterkin, alongside the Lieder of Mozart and Schubert, lute songs and traditional ballads.

Many songs were dedicated to Goss by these British composers, sadly a disc with the legendary accompanist Gerald Moore was recorded at Abbey Road, but the masters have not survived. Like his friend Warlock, Goss had an enyclopaedic knowledge of European Music, his recitals spanning Mediaeval Songs through the more unexplored Lieder of German composers, to the contemporary music of his day. After his death in 1953, Delius spoke of him in an obituary as ''the sweetest singer in England''.

''And it seemed that her voice comforted her hands to work, and her hands kept time to her voice music''

Sir Philip Sydney, Arcadia, First Book. Quoted by John Goss in his preface to ''Ballads of Britain''

(Bodley Head 1937)

From the Weekend Book, extended edition, October 1928. John Goss edited the traditional songs for inclusion,

note his expression marking for ''Shenandoah'' (Slowly, with great longing). He can be heard singing this with his Male Voice Quartet on the 'Gossiana' page.

This song was a favourite with Goss, along with other ballads he would sing unnacompanied in the pubs of Kent or Norfolk.