Bill Worland’s name was new to me when Marco Polo honoured him with a volume of its British Light Music series. That volume came with a note by Worland himself, in which he bemoaned what he saw as the ‘unfair’ neglect of light music since the late 1950s. If his reluctance to accept change does him little credit, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with his determination to stick to a musical style very much rooted in the library music of the 1940s and ’50s.

This second volume features a different orchestra from the first but the same conductor, and is entirely complementary. Its emphasis is on music inspired by Broadstairs, where Worland has lived since the early 1960s, working with the local light orchestra and ‘Old Tyme’ dance bands. The collection begins with an overture, Curtain Up!, that perfectly captures the sound of a theatre orchestra of the ’50s, after which the Broadstairs Suite attractively depicts local attractions in five contrasted movements.

The dates of the compositions in the collection actually range from 1944 to 2001; but any departure from a ’40s/’50s sound is most notably to evoke the 1920s in Honky-Tonk Town. Quintessentially British light music it all may be; but the City of Prague orchestra embraces it to the manner born. Unambitious and unremarkable much of it may also be, but those who love the British light music sound of the ’40s and ’50s may well be delighted with it.