Dear Eliza,

I don't disagree with anything you say. However, I think a song's content and context can have a different meaning at different times. I don't want to bash 'Prince Heathen' (at least, not the song) but, well...

For instance, an old mate of mine, Noel Murphy, used to do very well for himself in the 60s largely singing old Irish rebel songs to English folk audiences, including audiences of British squaddies who loved all of that stuff at the time. After 1969, many of those old songs didn't come over as as quaint or jolly as they did before. Not that they were any the lesser as songs, but the context had changed and they had a different meaning for many audiences by the end of the 70s.

Similarly, I remember Karl Dallas describing Mr. Fox's music as 'X Certificate Folk', likening them to old Hammer movies (mind you , I always thought he was a twat). A lot of the blood-and-guts ballads that were recorded in the late 60s - early 70s (many of which were effectively re-composed and made more graphic and explicit by the singers) played, I'm sure, on the same appeal. I first heard Martin singing 'Prince Heathen' at Cambridge in 1974 and for each person who took away a message about the obscenity of male violence to women there were probably at least a few who got a kick out of the song's description of the same thing. Nowadays the ratios would probably (hopefully) be reversed.

However, to return to the original question, I heard Martin sing a lovely song last year by Sidney Carter about a young squaddie who falls for a Greek girl after World War 2. It put me in mind of an old mate of mine (and a lifelong socialist) who was in Greece after the war and who loved the country and the people but never was able to come to terms with the fact that they were there to crush the Greek partisans and restore the King of Greece to the throne - and they knew that the people knew it. This mate of mine subsequently became a teacher of Jazz singing and as far as I know he's still at it.