"A fierce elegy to Britain’s past glories, this is a film to see again and again, if only because of Alec Guinness’s bold and vivid portrait of a rapidly tarnishing military hero. I am attached to it because I spent some of my two years’ service in the Royal Air Force at the Joint Services School for Linguists in Bodmin, Cornwall, not only with Navy and Royal Marines types but with soldiers from the endless list of British Army regiments, each with its fiercely prized individual identity, history, peculiarities of uniform, and traditions. No soldiers were more clanny or inbred than those of the fabled Scottish (kilted) Highland regiments, like the Black Watch, the Argyll & Sutherlands, or the Cameronians. The regiment in Tunes of Glory is like one of those, a small, enclosed world, and in it the rivalry between the brash and heroic young colonel and his replacement leads to a sad and messy tragedy. It is one of those brilliant “little” films that almost reaches greatness, and it remains, along with The Hill and Zulu, one of the iconic films about the British Army."

"Many of our generation of white, British, middle-class musicians who went to art college all knew about Mose Allison from ‘Parchman Farm’ and one or two other songs in the early Sixties that had been done by British R&B bands. So I knew a little bit about him but I suppose like many people, assumed he was a black guy. He turned out to be a Mississippi white guy with pasty legs and an obvious understanding of jazz and its traditions. He did most of his work in a piano trio with a bass player and a drummer, and he sang in this very laconic and down-home way. I wouldn’t say his songs never touched on romantic lyrics but they were often about stuff. About real life – that’s what gave him credibility and a high level of authenticity, because you knew this wasn’t a guy making it up, this was a guy who had lived the things he sang about. I, like many people of my generation, was struck by his work. The Who recorded at least one of his songs. I expect today there are a few younger musicians who will know about Mose Allison in the same way they will know about Roy Harper."