Elizabeth Poston

POSTON, Elizabeth. b. Highfield, Hertfordshire, 24 October 1905; d. Stevenage, Hertfordshire, 18 March 1987. A student at the Royal Academy of Music from 1924, she began to make a name for herself as a composer from 1925 when some of her solo songs were published and the BBC broadcast her prize-winning violin sonata. Working abroad during the 1930s, she returned to England to work for the BBC’s European Service at Bush House, while also appearing as a pianist at Dame Myra Hess’s National Gallery concerts during the early 1940s. The stress of her job (which possibly involved the sending of coded messages to foreign resistance movements) caused her to resign from the BBC in 1945 and return to...