David Cox (composer)

David Vassall Cox (Broadstairs, 4 February 1916 - Pratt’s Bottom, 31 January 1997) was a British composer and writer on music who for most of his professional life was music coordinator for the BBC World Service. Among his arrangements was Lillibullero, which introduced hourly World Service news broadcasts. Life and music Cox was born in Broadstairs, Kent, but his family soon moved to Australia. He returned to England in 1935, aged 19, to study at the Royal College of Music, where his teachers were Ralph Vaughan Williams, Herbert Howells and Arthur Benjamin. He was also an organ scholar at Worcester College, Oxford, until 1940. During the war he joined the RAF, playing the clarinet in the RAF Band, mostly at Cranwell in Lincolnshire. Cox joined the BBC in 1946, initially as a music producer for the Latin-American Service, then on the Third Programme, and finally as Music Organiser for the BBC External Services in 1956, a post he held until retirement in 1976. A year before his death, a concert marking his 80th birthday was held at All Saints’ Church, Tudeley, reviving several of his works, including the Five Songs after John Milton and extracts from the cantata Of Beasts. David Cox