Forty years ago, my childhood self wasn't in the least bored by Frederick Ashton's balletic animal magic: I saw it twice in cinemas large and small and asked for the soundtrack LP of John Lanchbery's ...

Would you guess Wayne Sleep as Squirrel Nutkin - the Till Eulenspiegel of the animal world (Lanchbery's choreographic tone poem here is way ahead of the visual execution) - as well as Tom Thumb to ...