‘A choir of all ages and voices: what brings us together is an enjoyment of singing sacred and secular music from a range of composers, classical and modern. We aim to perform three times a year and choir rehearsals are focused on these performances. There is no audition, you will almost certainly be sitting beside people with more and less experience than you and we are led by a vastly experienced conductor and a wonderful accompanist ... The well-known Handelian scholar (and Lifeboat surgeon) Dr James S. Hall, his wife Cynthia Hall and Ernest Stride, then Keyboard Professor at the Royal Marines School of Music in Deal, were the joint founders of the Deal and Walmer Handelian Society in 1946. This followed a performance of Handel’s Solomon in Canterbury Cathedral, after which the three founders emerged saying that they could form a local choir that would do as well!’