It is surprising that By the Bivouac's Fitful Flame, an early Walt Whitman setting, has lain neglected in manuscript for so long. This lovely setting for unaccompanied chorus started life as a Ballade for quintet in 1904 and was revised as a Nocturne, still for quintet, in 1906. The choral version must have come soon afterwards, thus representing the next stage in the experiment.

Valiant-for-Truth is a popular work, but few of the standard reference books on RVW have very much to say about it. Even Michael Kennedy does little more than tell us that it was written in November 1940. That date – when the war news was bleak – is the key to the selection of the text. It has nothing to do with the (then unfinished) opera Pilgrim's Progress – it's drawn from altogether the wrong part of the novel – but Mr Valiant-for-Truth had fought three 'rogues', emerging scarred but victorious; he passed through the River to his reward, 'and the trumpets all sounded for him on the other side.'