I was born in Conwy, a fishing village in north Wales, and many of my earliest memories are of singing. World War II was at its darkest hour, and my father was fighting in France. There was no cinema, and nobody we knew had a gramophone. So singing was an integral part of daily life.
For me it began as my mother sang me to sleep at night with ‘Golden slumbers kiss your eyes’, a lullaby written in the 17th century by Thomas Dekker. The Beatles appropriated it for their album in 1969, and more recently John Lewis harnessed it for a Christmas TV advert. Other songs I grew up with included ‘A frog he would a-wooing go’ and ‘The Lincolnshire Poacher’ – ‘Oh, tis my delight/On a shining night/In the season of the year’. We used to sing ‘Ten green bottles’ when we went for walks, and also that mysterious counting song ‘Green grow the