Episode 19. Red Heaven and A Pilgrim’s Song: Plays about Conrad Noel and Percy Dearmer

SYNOPSIS

In this interview Sarah Tombling talks with Rachel Ellis, whose late husband Hugo wrote the play, A Pilgrim’s Song and Simon Machin, who adapted Hugo Ellis’ play for broadcast on BBC Radio Sussex on 11 November 2014. Some years later Simon wrote Red Heaven.  Both plays celebrate musical collaborations between reforming Christian Socialist ritualist priests and renowned English composers.  Against the backdrop of the First World War A Pilgrim’s Song dramatizes the creation of the English Hymnal (1906) through Percy Dearmer’s inspired appointment of the agnostic Ralph Vaughan Williams as its musical editor. Tragedy then strikes as Dearmer loses both his wife, Mabel and youngest son, Christopher to war service in 1915. Red Heaven weaves an organ transcription of The Planets around the life story of Dearmer’s one-time curate, Conrad Noel, the Red Vicar of Thaxted, who collaborated with Gustav Holst to put on acclaimed Whitsun Festivals during the First World War.      

GUESTS

Guest interviewer Sarah Tombling is a freelance radio drama producer and co-director with Simon Machin of the non-profit company which has produced the Red Heaven Project. Rachel Ellis is a professional violinist and widow of the late teacher and dramatist Hugo Ellis, who set up the Space Arts Project at St John’s, Broadbridge Heath in the Diocese of Chichester. Dr Simon Machin is an Honorary Research Fellow in Children’s Literature, community playwright and oral historian.  

Sarah’s interview with Rachel and Simon was recorded at Sarah’s home on 31 August 2022.

 We would like to thank the Holst Society and the Space Arts Trust for their generous sponsorship of the podcast recording of the Red Heaven play by Simon Machin.