Harold Truscott (23 August 1914 – 7 October 1992) was a British composer, pianist, broadcaster and writer on music. Largely neglected as a composer in his lifetime, he made an important contribution to the British piano repertoire and was influential in spreading knowledge of a wide range of mainly unfashionable music. Life Born into a working-class family in Seven Kings, east London, Truscott was largely self-taught. By the age of 15 his strong native urge to compose was interpreted by his father as a sign of mental illness and, finding a psychiatrist to endorse this view, he had his son committed to an asylum in Romford. Truscott emerged after 20 weeks with his resolve undimmed. Later he did attend the Guildhall School of Music (1934), where he studied piano with Orlando Morgan, and the Royal College of Music (1943–45) in London on a part-time basis; at the latter he studied piano with Angus Morrison, horn with Frank Probin and received instruction in composition from Herbert Howells. Truscott spent much of his subsequent career teaching music, and eventually became principal lecturer in Music at Huddersfield Polytechnic College. He benefited from his friendship with the composer and broadcaster Robert Simpson, and during the 1950s he performed many broadcast recitals for the BBC, and some of his own compositions were broadcast by notable artists such as John Ogdon. Writings After the change in BBC music policy initiated by Sir William Glock in the late 1950s, Truscott's music ceased to receive attention, but he remained active as a copious giver of broadcast talks and contributor to journals on a wide range of subjects. He had an encyclopaedic range of knowledge and enthusiasms, ranging from the central composers of the Classical tradition to marginalised figures of the 19th and 20th centuries who were then deeply unfashionable. His advocacy of Granville Bantock, Havergal Brian, Dussek, Medtner, Hans Pfitzner, Max Reger, Franz Schmidt, Robert Volkmann and others was as sincere, and informed by an acquaintance with the music as close, as his discussions of Schubert's piano sonatas or Haydn's string quartets. His principal writings include books on Beethoven's Late String Quartets (Dobson, 1968) and Franz Schmidt's Orchestral Music (Toccata Press, 1984), as well as important contributions to The Symphony edited by Robert Simpson (Penguin Books, 1966). Unfinished at his death were a volume on Schmidt's chamber music, a study of the music of Korngold, another of Beethoven's