of succeeding Newman, whose retirement as chief music critic of The Sunday Times was assumed to be imminent. However, Newman had no intention of retiring, and made it clear that he would resent any successor-designate looking over his shoulder. Feeling slighted, Cardus resigned from the paper and accepted an offer from the London Evening Standard to be its music critic. This new appointment was short-lived; Cardus's lengthy and discursive concert reviews were incompatible with this paper's style, and were ruthlessly cut by subeditors. At the end of 1948 he was back in Australia, proclaiming his intention to settle there permanently. This determination, too, was brief; the lure of London life proved irresistible. Because of the commercial success of his Autobiography, published in 1947, and the immediate commissioning of a second autobiographical work, Cardus was not under immediate financial pressure. He left Australia again in the spring of 1949, and although he spent the English winter of 1950–51 in Australia, writing about the 1950–51 England v. Australia Test series for the Sydney Morning Herald, London was thereafter his permanent home. Here he worked as a freelance writer, in which role he resumed his association with The Manchester Guardian. In December 1951 he was appointed the paper's London music critic, on a permanent salaried basis. London critic In 1949 Cardus set up his London home at the National Liberal Club, while Edith took a flat in Bickenhall Mansions, just off Baker Street. The pair lived harmoniously apart, though in frequent contact, until Edith's death. Cardus found London's musical life invigorating, with five major orchestras and a host of distinguished conductors and solo artists performing regularly. Toscanini paid his final visit to England in 1952, with two concerts at the Royal Festival Hall. Outside London, Cardus was a regular visitor to the Edinburgh Festival and to Glyndebourne, and was in Manchester for the reopening of the Free Trade Hall and the "homecoming" of the Hallé Orchestra in November 1951. The inaugural concert concluded with Kathleen Ferrier singing "Land of Hope and Glory". Cardus had first heard Ferrier at the Edinburgh Festival in 1947; he became a devoted admirer to the extent that, eventually, questions were raised about his critical blindness to her technical weaknesses. He wrote of her singing that it was, "like the woman herself ... imbued with a quiet but reliant sense and a feeling for the fun and goodness of