Desmond Shawe-Taylor (music critic)

Desmond Christopher Shawe-Taylor, (29 May 1907 – 1 November 1995),[1] was a British writer, co-writer of The Record Guide, music critic of the New Statesman, The New Yorker and The Sunday Times and a regular and long-standing contributor to The Gramophone.

[2] His parents were members of the Anglo-Irish ruling classes; he was related to the playwright and co-founder of the Abbey Theatre, Lady Gregory and a cousin of Sir Hugh Lane who founded Dublin's gallery of modern art.

The long-established music magazine The Gramophone wrote of him, "His writing combined acute perception with an easy erudition that stemmed from wide cultural interests.

"[4] The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography said, "He became the most perceptive critic of singing among his colleagues, delighting in voices from an age preserved on his oldest records but quick to welcome new artists, and was also a friend to singers including Emma Eames, Lotte Lehmann, Elisabeth Schumann.

"[5] Together with his partner Edward Sackville-West and another close friend, the painter, collector and art dealer Eardley Knollys, Shawe-Taylor set up home at Long Crichel House in Dorset, in 1945.

[3] They hosted salons there, entertaining some of the notable cultural figures of the period including E.M. Forster, Nancy Mitford, Benjamin Britten, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant.