Nicholas Kenyon

Responsible for the BBC Proms 1996–2007, he was then appointed Managing Director of the Barbican Centre, before stepping down in September 2021 to become opera critic of The Telegraph and a Visiting Scholar in the Faculty of Music at the University of Cambridge.

In February 2007 he was announced as the new managing director of the Barbican Centre in the City of London, in succession to Sir John Tusa, a post he took up in October 2007, remaining until September 2021, when he became opera critic of the Telegraph and a Visiting Scholar at the Faculty of Music of Cambridge University.

[4] Awarded the President's Medal by the British Academy in 2011,[5] Sir Nicholas is a member of the Worshipful Company of Musicians.

In recent years the inclusion of the song has been criticised because of its jingoistic words, for example by Leonard Slatkin, the second non-British person to conduct the Last Night of the Proms.

[7] In 2020 the BBC proposed to perform the music in the Royal Albert Hall without the words, citing the difficulties the traditional arrangement posed during the COVID-19 pandemic.