things doomed to fade and vanish". At the 1929 Delius Festival in London, Cardus briefly met the composer, who thought he looked too young to be The Manchester Guardians music critic, and counselled him: "Don't read yourself daft. Trust to y'r emotions". Also against the grain of critical opinion, Cardus commended the then unfashionable music of Richard Strauss and Anton Bruckner. In 1931 Cardus visited the Salzburg Festival, where he met Beecham and began a friendship which lasted until Sir Thomas's death in 1961—despite numerous disagreements. One of Cardus's notices in 1937 so incensed Beecham that he announced he would not conduct any concert at which Cardus was present. Cardus later numbered Beecham, with Elgar and Delius, as "one of the three most original spirits known in English music since Purcell". The annual Salzburg Festival became a highlight of Cardus's musical calendar; in 1936 he saw Toscanini conduct a performance there of Wagner's Die Meistersinger that, he said, "will remain in the mind for a lifetime ... Toscanini held us like children listening to a tale told in the chimney corner, lighted by the glow of olden times". Cardus's final prewar Salzburg visit was in 1938, just after the German-Austrian Anschluss which led to the withdrawal in protest of many of the Festival's leading figures. Despite financial incentives from London newspapers, Cardus remained loyal to The Manchester Guardian. On the outbreak of war in September 1939 the Free Trade Hall closed, requisitioned for military purposes. The Hallé Society left Manchester to tour with Sargent around the north-west of England. With no music in Manchester and all first-class cricket suspended, Cardus was unemployed, "imprisoned in Manchester, useless to anybody". Thus, when he received an offer from Sir Keith Murdoch to join The Herald of Melbourne in Australia, he accepted immediately. Australia Cardus had been known to Australian readers since the 1920s, when The Argus in Melbourne reported his view that Australians made cricket "a war game ... with an intensity of purpose too deadly for a mere game." His books on cricket were widely reviewed in the Australian press in the 1920s and 30s; one critic commented in 1929, "Mr. Cardus mingles fancy with fact. The latter is preferable." Another Australian writer, quoting him extensively in 1932, observed, "Mr. Cardus is a gifted writer and a most impartial critic." By 1936 he was known to a considerable section of the Australian