HOWARD GOODALL is an Emmy, BRIT and BAFTA award-winning composer of choral music (Eternal Light: A Requiem), stage musicals (The Hired Man, Love Story), film and TV scores - among them The Vicar of Dibley, Q.I., Red Dwarf, Blackadder and Into the Storm. He was awarded the CBE in 2011 for service to music education.
Now comes Howard Goodall and all of everyone's prayers are answered ... He is sharply witty and entirely on the ball, but he never acts the smart ass and, most importantly, he obviously has deep knowledge of what he is talking about ... I prophesy that it will not only win prizes but change lives -- Rupert Christiansen Daily Telegraph An accessible guide to roughly 42,000 years of music in just over 300 pages that manages neither to sacfrifice precise detail nor pugnacious opinion ... Goodall is unfailingly acute ... a clever, engaging read -- Stuart Kelly Scotland on Sunday There is a Jumpin' Jack Flash liveliness in Goodall's approach -- Iain Finlayson The Times Who better to demystify the origins of music and trace the evolution of this most universal of artistic disciplines? -- Neil Norman Express The Story of Music is a lively zip through some 45 millennia . jumping back and forth between classical, folk and pop -- Christopher Hart Sunday Times