Author, music critic, artist and musician, Peter Gammond was born in Northwich, Cheshire in 1925, inheriting his musical interests from his father who was a cellist. He joined the Decca Record Company in 1952 as a music editor leaving in 1960 to become a freelance writer, critic and author. He has written over forty books on jazz, ragtime and the music-hall, including The Oxford Companion to Popular Music, and, on the classical side, books on Schubert, Mozart, Offenbach and record collecting.