A most affectionate 'Portrait of Ethel Smyth' by Peggy Reynolds, earlier this afternoon on R3.

  Apart from a broadcast of 'The Wreckers' many years ago and the more frequently played 'March of the Women', I didn't realise that her work had such range and colour.

  Intrigued, too, by Henry Brewster's suggestion of a trinity liaison between himself, his partner and the Dame, rather than the more intimate demands of a menage a trois.      I assume that the character of HB in Henry James's 'The Aspern Papers'; again,  a liaison with a man and two women, was also Brewster?

  The fruity voice and comments by Thomas Beecham conjured a sense of the times and the closing anecdote of Vita Sackville West, talking about the visit of the elderly and near deaf Dame Ethel,  after her request to hear the song of the nightingale in her garden (Tenterden?) was quite heartrending.   The bird song could be heard but not by the Dame.   They were about to leave when a nightingale perched, nearby, and VSW added, "I shall never forget the look on her face when she said, 'I've heard that song again'.    Sweet memories, too, of an earlier programme which told about Beatrice Harrison, in the mid 20s, playing her cello in a similar setting.

As an antidote, I'm about to select from the arrival of two DVDs.    "The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford"; another elegiac background, alongside horseshit and cordite; or Kurosawa's "Ran", a 'reimagining' of "King Lear" in feudal Japan.      Bradd Pitt won the toss - just!   

I heard Catherine Bott trailing this last week when she switched from rather dismissing her as a jokey relic al al Hilda Tablet to a lightbulb moment about her significance historically. I thought that was quite revealing in a sort of post-feminist way., in that CG is into her one-woman biog shows lately( lovely voice and insight as a rule imho)When I hear some of the  more pretentious holding forth on Night Waves etc I do kind of yearn for a bit of Smythian robustness. The music was wildly uneven, sure, but the circs of the time meant that she pretty much had to be a lone, er,vixen, as a practicioner.

I wonder if Denis Healey's comment about Geoffrey Howe referenced that? How good to think of ES's more rarified music finding its time around now. Fascinating post as ever Stanley, Thanks.