Alan Blaikley (1940-2022) *82

was an English songwriter and composer, best known for writing a series of international hits in the 1960s and 1970s in collaboration with Ken Howard, including the UK number ones "Have I the Right?" and "The Legend of Xanadu". Together with Howard, he also wrote two West End musicals and a number of TV themes, including the theme music for the BBC's long-running series of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple. Born Alan Tudor Blaikley in Hampstead Garden Suburb, London, Blaikley was educated at University College School (UCS), Hampstead, and Wadham College, Oxford, where he read Classical Moderations (Latin and Greek) and English, and was Reviews Editor of the university newspaper, Cherwell.

After coming down from university, he joined forces with two old UCS friends Ken Howard and Paul Overy with whom, between 1962 and 1963, he ran and edited four issues of a magazine, Axle Quarterly, publishing early work by Melvyn Bragg, Ray Gosling, Alexis Lykiard, Gillian Freeman and Simon Raven, among others. An offshoot of the Quarterly was a series of five booklets on controversial topics commissioned by Blaikley, Howard and Overy, Axle Spokes (Axle Publications 1963): Peter Graham The Abortive Renaissance, a critical examination of British New Wave cinema; John Gale Sex – is it easy?, the emergence of the permissive society; Gavin Millar Pop! – hit or miss?, the British hit-parade in the early days of the Beatles; Anthony Rowley (pseudonym of Alan Blaikley) Another Kind of Loving, homosexuality in the years when it was still a criminal offence in the UK; Melville Hardiment Hooked, an enquiry into the extent and nature of drug addiction in the early 1960s.