Pomp and Circumstance sounds like the pinnacle of class-conscious Imperial Britain, and its mustachioed composer looks like the ultimate establishment insider. The truth is the opposite: Edward Elgar was a working-class, self-taught Catholic shopkeeper’s son who felt like an imposter his entire life.

This deep dive looks past the tweed and patriotism to reveal a deeply emotional outsider who learned his craft conducting a band at a lunatic asylum, hid secret codes in his music, and became a pioneer of recording technology. It is the story of a tortured artist who accidentally wrote the world’s most famous corporate anthem and spent his life being misunderstood.

• How five years arranging music for a mismatched asylum band became his masterclass in orchestration
• Alice Roberts, who was disinherited by her aristocratic family for marrying him and became his lifelong champion
• The Enigma Variations and its unsolved hidden ‘ghost melody’ that listeners must imagine
• His horror at watching Land of Hope and Glory weaponized to send a generation to die in World War I
• His pivot to amateur chemistry, football chants, and pioneering Abbey Road gramophone recordings, plus his deathbed confession of disbelief