By Christopher Idle
St. Matthias Press. 328 pages. £12.99
ISBN 1 873166 72 9
The story is told that the wife of Oscar Hammerstein II, the well-known lyricist, once overhead Mrs. Jerome Kern being congratulated on Kern's composition of 'Ol' Man River'. Mrs Hammerstein immediately interjected: 'He did not write 'Old Man River', he wrote 'Dum Dum Deda'.'
This is a story much loved by lyricists, who as a breed feel undervalued, and was related by Timothy Dudley-Smith at the launch in September of the collected hymn texts of Christopher Idle, a collection to which TDS has written a foreword.
