This interview with Sylvia Townsend Warner was conducted in 1975 by Val Warner and Michael Schmidt and is published for the first time here. The questions were spoken off-microphone and in some cases have had to be inferred from the replies, hence an apparent terseness on the part of the interviewers. Sylvia Townsend Warner speaks first:

I am what is that odd thing, a musicologist. I've done a lot of work on church music. I was one of the editorial committee on Tudor Church Music, which was financed, much to our surprise, by the Carnegie U.K. Trust.

Have you written music as well?

I have composed music; it's not at all good. I play the piano, and I tried to play the viola because I liked the noise. But nobody liked the noise that I got out of the viola when I was learning and so I gave it up.

You were a music scholar, but not at a university.

No, I never went to a university. I never went to school. . . well, I went to kindergarten for about two terms, and then I was dismissed for being a bad influence. I was a natural mimic, and I mimicked the unfortunate people who were teaching me. I didn't mean any wickedness by it, but like Mary's lamb, I made the children laugh and play and was a very bad influence. They sent me back with a very dubious report; ...