Thomas Baron Pitfield (5 April 1903 – 11 November 1999)[1] was a British polymath, primarily remembered as a composer, but also a poet, artist, engraver, calligrapher, master craftsman, furniture builder and teacher.

[2] He was born at 57 New Road Bolton to elderly parents whose strict Victorian values and lack of support for his creative interests led to his being withdrawn from school at 14 for a seven-year engineering apprenticeship with Hick, Hargreaves & Co. Ltd. His designs for transmission machinery for the cotton industry survive with ink and watercolour paintings of railway engines.

[3] Although he was essentially self-taught as a composer, he studied piano, cello and harmony at the Royal Manchester College of Music, where his teachers were Thomas Keighley, Kathleen Moorhouse, Frank Merrick and Carl Fuchs.

He was a prolific composer and his compositions are typically "light-hearted and small scale", referencing folk music and often including irregular rhythms.

[8] He wrote for many notable artists, such as Léon Goossens, Evelyn Rothwell, Archie Camden, Dolmetsch, and Osian Ellis.

Hubert J. Foss of the Oxford University Press published many of his compositions, illustrations, frontispieces and cover-designs, which he made for various publications, including the one for Benjamin Britten's Simple Symphony.