David Cairns

David Cairns was chief music critic of the Sunday Times from 1983 to 1992, having earlier been music critic and arts editor of the Spectator and a writer on the Evening Standard, the Financial Times and the New Statesman. From 1967 to 1972 he worked for the London branch of Phonogram, where he was involved in planning and carrying out large-scale recordings of Haydn, Mozart, Berlioz and Tippett. He has been Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of California at Davis, a visiting scholar at the Getty Center in Santa Monica, and a visiting fellow of Merton College, Oxford. In 1991, in recognition of his services to French music, he was made Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He has always been actively involved in music making; he was co-founder of the Chelsea Opera Group and is now conductor of the Thorington Players.

Berlioz: The Making of an Artist 1803-1832 won the Royal Philharmonic Society's Music Award, the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year and the British Academy's Derek Allen Prize. Berlioz: Servitude and Greatness 1832-1869 won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-fiction, the Whitbread Biography of the Year and the Royal Philharmonic Society's Music Award.