It was my good fortune that the junior school I attended made a speciality of performing English folk dances, which has helped to make this disc of British dances a special delight for me, reminding me of such favourites as ‘Jenny pluck pears’, ‘Seventeen come Sunday’ and ‘Sellinger’s Round’. The arrangements here for military band – brass plus woodwind – are all masterly, inspiring phenomenally precise ensemble from the brilliant RAF Central Band under its conductor, Wing Commander Duncan Stubbs.

It is good to have the two Holst suites for military band alongside the winning RVW, Holst having written his Suites early in his career when he had to eke out a living playing in bands. Each of the suites is in three movements, with the folk melodies brilliantly interwoven. Played with sparkle as here, they are a delight from first to last.

Percy Grainger’s Lincolnshire Posy and Ernest Tomlinson’s Suite of English Folk Dances are altogether simpler in structure, the one a sequence of six dances collected in Lincolnshire and the other, dating from much later (1999 in its military band form), consisting of six more dances, artfully set. Rounding off the whole sequence is the Rhapsody of Gordon Langford, a substantial piece involving a whole range of dances. With such brilliant performances recorded vividly, there is no risk of the sequence outstaying its welcome. Pure delight for anyone in love with English folk music.