Elizabeth Maconchy inhabited a variety of different worlds. She was a female composer at a time when there were considerably fewer of them than their male counterparts; she was a wife and mother; she was English born to Irish parents, spending much of her childhood in Ireland before moving back to England as a teenager to study at the Royal College of Music; and she had a life-changing bout of tuberculosis in an era when the treatment largely involved cold, fresh air and a retreat from hard work. These worlds, as well as the colourful and thrilling variety of Maconchy’s music, are explored in Maconchy in Context, the first in the series to be devoted to a female composer.