Of all the many offshoots and projects, there’s none more fanciful or just plain quirky than . A poem for children written in 1802 by historian, art collector, botanist, sometime MP and occasional writer William Roscoe, was adapted in 1973 into a then-popular book by author William Plomer and illustrator Alan Aldridge. Plomer died before it was published, but its success prompted Aldridge to conceive of expanding the idea into an album that would go on to soundtrack an animated film.
Initially, Aldridge imagined as composers of the music to fit the theme of a woodland party for insects and other small animals. When that didn’t pan out, he approached first , who was too busy with Purple, and then the band’s just-departed bass player. “It was something that just landed in my lap,” Glover acknowledges.
“When I agreed to take it on, Alan said to me: ‘Listen to Benjamin Britten,’ so I got the inkling he wanted something orchestral and classical. I didn’t take that approach, though, because I’m not that kind of musician or writer. I write songs.
“It was a massive undertaking. I had this vision of going to a villa in the sun, somewhere with a grand piano, and spending a month writing it. It didn’t work out that way.
I went to Minorca, where it rained all day, every day and there was no piano.” Ultimately, Glover composed most of the work at home on his own baby grand. Studying Aldridge and Plomer’s book, he reasoned that there were 20 characters in it and.
