A RESPECTED choirmaster from Worcester has collected together his life’s work for a new book.

Dr Donald Hunt, former director of music at Worcester Cathedral and founder of the Elgar Chorale, has spent a lifetime arranging and composing and his latest work is an impressive collection of festive carols.

The Joys of Christmas: Carols from Worcester features nearly 20 of Dr Hunt’s compositions, including his popular arrangement of Away in a Manger. “I’ve been arranging and rearranging carols since I was a boy,” said Dr Hunt, who teaches composition and choral ensemble at Worcester’s prestigious Elgar School of Music.

“One of them, which I’m hoping to put into a second book, was written when I was a 14-year-old chorister at Gloucester Cathedral. I’d kept it all these years and found it in a little tin box.”

While Dr Hunt’s compositions are personal to him – one was written to celebrate a close colleague’s 70th birthday, another was penned shortly after his children were born – the book has made them available to the general public.

The Joys of Christmas is published by Eyelevel Books (eyelevelbooks.co.uk).

It is available online and can also be obtained from All Music Plus, Sidbury, Worcester.