Elizabeth Poston (24 October 1905 – 18 March 1987) was an English composer, pianist and writer. Early life and career Poston was born in Highfield House in Pin Green, which is now the site of Hampson Park in Stevenage. In 1914, she moved with her mother, Clementine Poston, to nearby Rooks Nest House, where E. M. Forster had lived as a child. Poston and Forster subsequently became good friends. After attending Queen Margaret's School, York and studying with pianist Harold Samuel, she attended the Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in London, where both Peter Warlock and Ralph Vaughan Williams encouraged her talents and where she studied composition with Julius Harrison. She won a prize from the RAM for her one movement Violin Sonata, which was subsequently broadcast by the BBC on 9 July 1928, with Antonio Brosa as soloist and Victor Hely-Hutchinson piano. When she graduated from the RAM in 1925, seven of her songs were published, and in 1928 she published five more. Poston went abroad between 1930 and 1939, where she studied architecture and collected folksongs. She was also a respected performer, premiering Walter Leigh’s Concertino for harpsichord and strings in 1934. Wartime and the BBC When she returned to England at the beginning of World War II Poston joined the BBC and became director of music in the European Service. During the war she is said to have carried out secretive work as an agent; at the BBC she apparently used gramophone records to send coded messages to allies in Europe. During the war she also played the piano at the National Gallery lunchtime concerts organised by Myra Hess. Poston left the BBC briefly in 1945, but returned in 1946 at the invitation of Douglas Cleverdon to advise on the creation of the BBC Third Programme. She subsequently became one of the youngest composers to be represented on the network at its opening, with her incidental music for John Milton's Comus. Composition Poston composed scores for radio and television productions – over 40 for radio alone – and collaborated with C. S. Lewis, Dylan Thomas, Terence Tiller and other writers. She wrote the score for the 1970 BBC television production of Howards End (broadcast on 26 December 1970 as Play of the Month, now lost) while living in Rooks Nest House, which was the setting for the novel. The Nativity (1950) was premiered as a radio feature