Vernon George "Tod" Handley CBE (11 November 1930 – 10 September 2008) was a British conductor. He was born of Welsh parents into a musical family in Enfield, London. He acquired the nickname "Tod" because his feet were turned in at his birth, which his father simply summarised: "They toddle". Handley preferred the use of the name "Tod" throughout his life over his given names.
Handley attended Enfield Grammar School and later Balliol College, Ox...
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Vernon George "Tod" Handley CBE (11 November 1930 – 10 September 2008) was a British conductor. He was born of Welsh parents into a musical family in Enfield, London. He acquired the nickname "Tod" because his feet were turned in at his birth, which his father simply summarised: "They toddle". Handley preferred the use of the name "Tod" throughout his life over his given names.
Handley attended Enfield Grammar School and later Balliol College, Oxford. While in school, Handley watched the BBC Symphony Orchestra in its studio in Maida Vale, where by his own account he learned some of his conducting technique by watching Sir Adrian Boult. Later the two corresponded in the early 1950s and met around 1958. He spent a period in the Armed Forces and then attended Balliol College, Oxford, where he read English philology, and the Guildhall School of Music, where his performing instrument was the double bass. He then became Sir Adrian Boult's pupil. During their first meeting he "was put...
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