Devil’s Galop

Not many member’s of today’s audience will remember the thrill of anticipation aroused by the opening music of “Dick Barton – Special Agent” – the BBC’s first ever daily radio serial - which ran for 711 episodes on the Light Programme in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Beginning with an arresting drum roll and setting off immediately on what sounds like a frenzied chase, it was just right for introducing the hair-raising adventures of our detective hero and his faithful assistants Jock and Snowey. Devil’s Galop was actually written in 1944, two years before the BBC got hold of it, by composer and conductor Charles Williams, who scored a major hit three years later with The Dream of Olwen for the film “While I Live.”