Biography

Before his teens he was giving recitals and, in his later years, he used to enjoy telling how he received what he then regarded as the ultimate accolade - being invited by the Douglas municipal authorities to play for holiday-makers for two weeks in succession. At that time apparently, no one was ever engaged for more than one week.

Wood's exceptional abilities were eventually given wider recognition with the awarding to him at the age of fifteen of an open scholarship to the Royal College of Music where he was able to benefit from the tuition of Enrique Fernandez Arbos for violin, and Sir Charles Villiers Stanford for composition.

His last song appears to have been Give Me Your Hand in 1957.

In 2018 the BBC Concert Orchestra issued a new recording of the Snapshots of London Suite (1948) and premiere recordings of five other suites: Egypta (1929), Three Famous Cinema Stars (1929), Cities of Romance (1937), Manx Countryside Sketches (1943), and Royal Castles (1952).

Although his first name was pronounced Hayden rather than in the manner of the great Franz Joseph, it was, nonetheless, Austria's famous musical son who dictated the nomenclature. Just days before his wife was due to produce her off-spring, the future composer's father took himself off to hear a performance of - appropriately enough - The Creation and duly vowed that if the new arrival were to be a boy, he would christen it Haydn. The gender requirement being fulfilled, the promised name was accordingly bestowed.