This conference, now in its thirtieth year, and run very capably by Katherine Hogg and Colin Colman (both Gerald Coke Handel Collection, The Foundling Museum), together with Claire Sharpe (Royal Academy of Music), is a personal favourite of mine. The variety of papers always means that one is drawn into at least one subject about which one knows almost nothing, but which invariably informs or enriches one's own area of expertise.