“I committed a lapse of taste last month and I will not be surprised if I am dismissed from my honourable office,” wrote Sir John Betjeman in 1974. The letter’s recipient was Major Sir Rennie Maudslay, keeper of the privy purse. The lapse in taste was Betjeman’s Banana Blush, an album in which the poet laureate recited a dozen of his poems to a series of musical settings by the composer Jim Parker, who has died aged 88.
While the album widened the poet’s fanbase, it was the making of Parker, who would become one of the most prolific composers in television. Among the work he is best known for are the early TV dramas of Victoria Wood, the BBC’s House of Cards trilogy and 121 episodes of Midsomer Murders.
