Margaret Harrison (1899–1995) was an English violinist and the youngest of four sisters who were respected classical musicians in Great Britain during the early 20th century.
May went to Grez a lot, especially later when they were doing the Third Sonata which Delius wrote for her.”Margaret Harrison then made her own debut in 1918, performing Stanford’s Irish Concertino for violin and cello with her sisters, May and Beatrice, at Wigmore Hall in December of that year.
In addition to 16 Aberdeen terriers, the grounds of the Harrison’s estate were home to an Airedale, Irish Wolfhound, two baby alligators, and a number of birds, including budgerigars, canaries and parrots.
[19] 1926 and 1927 also proved to be important years as Margaret Harrison and her sister, Beatrice, toured the United States and the Netherlands, performing the cello sonata of Delius.
In a 1984 interview for The Delius Society, she recalled:[20] My limited piano-playing was enough to enable me to accompany in the Cello Sonata, so Beatrice and I played it everywhere.
I’ve never forgotten landing on the floor: after that I played it with plenty of abandon!During the mid-1930s, the Harrison sisters suffered multiple losses with the 1934 deaths of their mother and, in June of that same year, Delius.
[21] Among the friends and colleagues made by the sisters in the musical community, in addition to Delius, Elgar and Glazunov, were: Eugen d'Albert, Sir Arnold Bax, Pablo Casals, John Ireland, Fritz Kreisler, Zoltán Kodály, Dame Nellie Melba, Ernest John Moeran, Oskar Nedbal, Arthur Nikisch, Roger Quilter, Sergei Rachmaninoff, and Felix Weingartner.
[22][23] Prior to the outbreak of World War II, May Harrison's performances were frequently heard live in Promenade Concerts and via the BBC Radio.
Three of the Harrison sisters – Margaret, Beatrice and May – performed in the Delius Memorial Concert at Wigmore Hall on 29 May 1946, which helped raise funds to ease the war-related suffering of European children.
Ultimately, she became a breeder of Irish Wolfhounds and regular supplier of the dogs to English military units for use as regimental mascots.
[25] In her 2016 book, Carole Lashmar recalled her first meeting with Margaret Harrison:[26] … I do remember going with my mum and Aunt Dobbie to the Sanctuary Kennels in Outwood….
The name 'Sanctuary' was based on the work they did from the start of the 2nd World War taking care of dogs belonging to airmen whilst they were flying or if they had been killed or imprisoned.Lashmar explained in her book that Margaret Harrington had met May Atfield sometime in the 1930s through their shared interest of Irish Wolfhounds; Atfield then moved into the Harrison household during the latter part of that decade.