In addition to his work for The Times, Howes wrote fifteen books, and served on many musical committees for bodies including the BBC and the Arts Council.
[1] He supported the theory that Hubert Parry and Charles Villiers Stanford led an "English Musical Renaissance" in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, from which composers not from a Royal College elite were excluded.
[1] According to his fellow critic Martin Cooper, Howes's affinity with music in the "English Renaissance" tradition left him out of sympathy with the increasingly cosmopolitan outlook of those British composers who emerged only after the Second World War.
[1] He lived with his family at Newbridge Mill in Standlake, Oxfordshire, and died at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, at the age of 83.
He was cremated at Oxford crematorium on 2 October 1974, and his ashes were interred at St Lawrence, Combe, Oxfordshire.