Although the British composer Liza Lehmann had begun her career as a singer – she appeared in concerts and recitals, performing in oratorio and in various London concert series as well as overseas – damage to her vocal cords forced her to concentrate on composition, in which she had had an interest since early childhood, and on accompaniment. This collection from her extensive song output includes poems from Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses, once familiar in every nursery, her delightful mock-serious settings of Hilaire Belloc’s Cautionary Tales and two Nonsense Songs from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Although the songs are short and light-hearted, they exhibit considerably more than just period charm. Liza Lehmann’s second son, Lesley, was the father of the conductor Steuart Bedford, who accompanies the songs here, as his grandmother once did, and of the composer David Bedford.