BBC television. He composed film scores for Eric Robinson before joining the Sadler's Wells Theatre Ballet (later the Royal Ballet touring company) in 1951, with whom he proceeded to orchestrate, in 1953, the first professional ballet choreographed by Kenneth MacMillan: Somnambulism whose music was composed with music by Stan Kenton. Lanchbery also orchestrated The House of Birds (La Casa de los Pájaros) in 1955, with original music by Federico Mompou. Principal Conductor of Royal Ballet: 1959 – 1972 He served as Principal Conductor of the Royal Ballet from 1959 from 1972. He arranged La fille mal gardée (original music by Ferdinand Hérold and others), to choreography by Frederick Ashton, for the Royal Ballet in 1960. Lanchbery's re-working also included some Donizetti and much of his own invention. This work includes the famous Clog Dance used for many years as a theme tune for Home This Afternoon on BBC radio. In addition to the revenue from his recordings, Lanchbery had his income supplemented by the copyright he earned from his orchestral arrangements, which were used by ballet companies all over the world. With Ashton, he composed The Two Pigeons; A Month in the Country; and The Dream, one of the most critically acclaimed ballet versions of A Midsummer Night's Dream. In 1966 Rudolf Nureyev asked Lanchbery to re-write Ludwig Minkus's Don Quixote. Although he resigned from the position of Director of the Royal Ballet in 1972, he continued to conduct regularly for the company until 2001. Principal Conductor of Australian Ballet: 1972 – 1977 Notable successes for Lanchbery included the arrangement of the Liszt music for Kenneth MacMillan's stormy multi-act Mayerling, which premiered at Covent Garden in 1978, and the arrangement of the Franz Lehár score for the first full-length ballet production of The Merry Widow for the Australian Ballet in 1976. In 1970 he arranged the score for the ballet film The Tales of Beatrix Potter. His sources were many and varied, including the operas of Michael William Balfe and Arthur Sullivan. He also arranged the music and conducted the orchestra for Nijinsky in 1980. Lanchbery was the first to convert operas into ballets (The Tales of Hoffmann, The Merry Widow, Die Fledermaus), and he also wrote music for some British films of the 1950s, including Deadly Nightshade (1953) and Colonel March Investigates (1955). He was involved in The Turning Point (1977), starring Mikhail Baryshnikov and Leslie Browne, and his