Alan Hawkshaw – Great Mysteries Of The World

For those of a certain age in the UK, the late Alan Hawkshaw, like The BBC Radiophonic Workshop provided the sound to our television memories, most memorably in the late 70s/80s with the theme from the children's TV drama Grange Hill and the Channel 4 quiz show Countdown.
However for me, it's his many library music albums that are the real treasures and out of them all my favourite is the music he did for Arthur C. Clarke's Mysteries of the World early 80s TV show, each thirty minute episode devoted to one aspect of 'the unexplained' such as UFOs, the Yeti and The Black Madonna. While the shows themselves were manna from heaven for my adolescent freak self, it's the music that really cements my love of this series. This was Alan Hawkshaw genius, capturing the essence of what the show was and distilling it in its theme and incidental music, even when the very subject matter had a ontological question mark over it, the UFO track somehow sounded like a UFO just as the Grange Hill theme sounded like a school in motion.
Born in Leeds in Northern England like myself, he was clearly a good man and the fact that he quietly donated 10% of his income to charity and his foundation offers dozens of yearly music scholarships doesn't feel surprising at all.