David Willcocks

WILLCOCKS, (Sir) David Valentine. b. Newquay, Cornwall, 30 December 1919; d. Cambridge, 17 September 2015. A chorister at Westminster Abbey between 1929 and 1933, and a schoolboy at Clifton College, he pursued his musical studies at the Royal College of Music before going on to King’s College, Cambridge as an organ scholar during the period of Boris Ord* (1897-1961, see ‘Adam lay y-bounden’*) as director of music. There he also held the John Stewart of Rannoch scholarship in sacred music, as Ord had done before him. Commissioned in 1941 as an officer during the Second World War in the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry, he distinguished himself in July 1944 during the Normandy invasion and...