Richard Morrison

reat institutions sometimes have strange beginnings. Take the Royal Academy of Music, Britain’s oldest conservatoire, celebrating its 200th birthday this year. Three unlikely men were responsible for its genesis. Two were military commanders who played the violin for recreation and were clearly perturbed by the lack of training for British musicians. One was the Duke of Wellington, no less. Seven years after he had ‘thrashed Bonaparte’ (in WS Gilbert’s immortal words), he