The Captain's Apprentice
  • Published: 30 September 2023
  • ISBN: 9781529115109
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 400
  • RRP: $24.99

The Captain's Apprentice

Ralph Vaughan Williams and the Story of a Folk Song

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Unusual, evocative non-fiction about the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams and folk, how it changed his music, our cultural landscape and the people and traditions he collected from.

***WINNER OF THE NEW ANGLE PRIZE FOR LITERATURE***
***WINNER OF THE HWA NON-FICTION AWARD***

A beautifully written exploration of the world of Edwardian folk music, and its influence on the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams

In January 1905 the young Vaughan Williams, not yet one of England's most famous composers, visited Norfolk to find folk songs 'from the mouths of the singers'. An old fisherman, James 'Duggie' Carter, performed 'The Captain's Apprentice', a brutal tale of torture sung to the most beautiful tune the young composer had ever heard.

With this transformational moment at its heart, the book traces the contrasting lives of the well-to-do composer and a forgotten cabin boy who died at sea, and brings fresh perspectives on folk-song collectors, the singers and their songs.

***AS READ ON BBC RADIO 4***

'A quirky, fascinating read. Davison excels in evoking English landscapes' Sunday Times

'Animated, entertaining... Presenting a richly complex picture of a subject that can all too easily be shrouded in a sentimental haze' Daily Telegraph
  • Published: 30 September 2023
  • ISBN: 9781529115109
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 400
  • RRP: $24.99
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About the author

Caroline Davison

Before becoming a writer, Caroline Davison worked as a conservationist in the heritage sector for thirty years. Her publications include a novel, The Pleasure Garden, and a number of non-fiction essays. Caroline also writes and performs music and has been a singer in various bands and choirs since the age of seventeen. She lives and works in Norfolk.

Praise for The Captain's Apprentice

A sadistic murder and the staggering words of a song drive Davison's obsession to unravel this vivid story of lives, landscapes and musical inspiration. No stone is left unturned in the meticulous gathering. Her gift is a work of love and infinite care

Keggie Carew, Costa Award-winning author of DADLAND

This is a hugely intriguing, sensitively woven and at times unexpectedly moving book. What begins as an investigation into one English folk song and one twentieth-century English composer's interaction with it spirals outwards into a galaxy of related tales, discoveries, insights and surprises. It is written from the heart, an elegy to lost landscapes, to nearly forgotten communities and their cultural legacies, relived and newly honoured in the pages of this thoroughly absorbing book

Howard Goodall, author of THE STORY OF MUSIC

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and its weaving of biography, social history and folk song

Steve Roud, author of FOLK SONG IN ENGLAND

Davison's evocative, far from linear approach does great service to the composer

Literary Review

Animated, entertaining . . . quietly sensitive to ironies and ambiguities without being pretentious, presenting a richly complex picture of a subject that can all too easily be shrouded in a sentimental haze

Daily Telegraph

The book makes for a quirky, fascinating read. Davison excels in evoking English landscapes, especially in Vaughan Williams's beloved fen country

Christopher Hart, The Sunday Times

The Captain's Apprentice explores a more profound and complex seam of folk discovery, and concentrates on a single life-changing episode in Vaughan Williams' life... [it is] well written and researched

Ian Thomson, Financial Times