Originally printed in the October 1965 issue of Gramophone.

The death of Cecil Pollard is a bitter loss to his family, his friends and the paper he has served for forty years. I read with poignancy words I wrote this summer in Octave 6 of My Life and Times, which will not be published for at least a year: "In that autumn of 1925 a young accountant from our firm of auditors gave a rather disturbing picture of the financial side of The Gramophone. To our grateful surprise he said he should like to leave his own job and work for the paper in whose future he had confidence. In 1926 Cecil Pollard became business manager, and the position The Gramophone holds today is due to his enthusiasm, integrity and skill. His son Anthony, not yet born in 1925, would in due course devote his life to the paper."

At that date Christopher Stone was London Editor and the office was at 58 Frith Street, Soho. Those were the days of the Expert Committee who used to come over to Jethou from time to time to pronounce judgement on horns and soundboxes and various gramophone gadgets. I am proud and glad to think that P. Wilson, always an inspiration, who was one of those enthusiastic visitors, still advises our readers about the infinitely more complicated gramophones of today. Cecil Pollard came often to the island and whatever problems had to be faced with the advent of electrical recording, he was always undisturbed and I was able to feel that we should weather whatever financial storm threatened. His advice was invaluable both to me and to Christopher Stone.

His most remarkable achievement was the way he carried The Gramophone through the last war. I still marvel at it.

Then after the war came the longplaying record, the transition period into which was even more difficult than the transition from acoustic to electric recording. By now Cecil Pollard had a son old enough to become an asset to The Gramophone and the devotion with which Anthony Pollard gave his youthful enthusiasm to the paper was a filial tribute of which any father could be justifiably proud.

To the very end of that long illness borne with much courage Cecil Pollard kept his hand on the financial tiller. He was regarded with the greatest respect by everybody in the gramophone world, and I know that the men who direct the destinies of the gramophone will feel almost as sharp a sense of personal loss as I feel myself. The greatest penalty of old age is to outlive friends we have loved.

Compton Mackenzie