Palmer , Christopher , 1946-1995 , musician and music critic

Born the son of an RAF pilot in 1946, Christopher Palmer was educated at Norwich School and Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Initially studying modern languages at Cambridge, he switched courses to music. His career was wide and varied: he was a writer, producing biographies, sleeve notes, radio scripts, reviews and articles, mainly on British music; he was also a talented orchestrator and arranger of film scores and classical music; and a record producer who particularly benefited unsung British composers. Palmer had an enthusiasm for Prokofiev, Ravel and Britten, and collaborated with Oleg Prokofiev on the publication of Serge Prokofiev, Soviet Diary, 1927 and other writings (Faber and Faber, 1991). His work on a new biography of Prokofiev was cut short by his untimely death in 1995.