works, such as the late Beethoven string quartets and Mahler's Ninth Symphony, operas including The Marriage of Figaro and Der Rosenkavalier, and performers such as Wilhelm Furtwängler and Arturo Toscanini. He also gave a weekly, fifteen-minute talk on music, illustrated by records, for the children's Argonauts Club programme and regularly wrote for ABC Weekly. Cardus rented a small flat in the Kings Cross district of Sydney, where he wrote his Ten Composers (1945) and Autobiography (1947). He said later that he found the discipline of writing for seven hours a day difficult at first, but that the process had turned him from a journalist into something more substantial. After his wife announced her intention of sailing from England in 1941 to join him, Cardus declined to move to a larger flat to accommodate them both, and rented a separate establishment for her a mile away. They dined together once a week, but otherwise continued to lead largely separate lives. By the end of the war Cardus's thoughts were turning to England. Refusing an offer of a highly paid permanent contract to cover both music and cricket for the SMH he considered his options; with some reluctance he agreed to cover the MCC's 1946–47 tour of Australia for the SMH and also for The Times and The Manchester Guardian. The novelist Charles Morgan wrote of Cardus's reports, "the best [I have] read these 40 years. Who shall dare to say now that George Meredith is forgotten?" Later career Years of uncertainty In April 1947 Cardus returned to England. He had not as yet decided to leave Australia permanently, but "felt in need of spiritual refreshment". He found a war-weary England in which much had changed; familiar landmarks had disappeared, and old friends and acquaintances had died. The Free Trade Hall was a burnt-out shell, and the Queen's Hall in London completely destroyed; however, Cardus was struck by the apparent good health of the English music scene. He also found an undamaged Lord's, and enjoyed a season of magnificent cricket, marked by the batting exploits of the Middlesex pair, Denis Compton and Bill Edrich. Cardus was back in Sydney by the end of the year, but early in 1948, having accepted an offer from The Sunday Times to cover that year's Test series against Australia, he left for England again. Another factor that brought Cardus to England in 1948 was the prospect