Eric Coates set several lyrics by Frederic Edward Weatherly, who was a barrister as well as one of the most prolific and successful writers of ballad lyrics. Coates recalled how, as a young man, he sought a lyric from Weatherly and visited him at his London residence in Woburn Place: “He was one of the smallest men I had met and, for such a remarkably gifted man, strangely enough, was the possessor of a small head … I noticed on his desk two piles of papers, the one on the right looked like lyrics and the one on his left had the appearance of legal documents. I was right in both cases, for during the conversation which followed he told me he wrote poems while working out difficult problems of law”.
from notes by Andrew Lamb © 2003
