He went on to the Royal College of Music, studying composition with George Dyson, organ with George Thalben-Ball, and playing clarinet in the student orchestra under Malcolm Sargent,[1] while taking additional private harmony and counterpoint lessons from Harold Darke.
[3] Hull composed a setting of William Blake's War-Song to Englishmen, published by Oxford University Press in 1928.
[1] In 1929 he began working as a freelance author and music critic, using the byline Robert H. Hull.
His friend, the clarinettist and music publisher Alan Frank, used to style him as "all readers Robin".
[1] Hull wrote two short books for Leonard and Virginia Woolf's Hogarth Essays series: Contemporary Music in 1927[6] and Delius in 1928,[7] and another on Bax four years later for Murdoch & Co, analysing his first four symphonies.