This is all interesting stuff. The re-evaluation of Lloyd and MacColl's legacies is certainly valid, but one distinction seems important to me: MacColl seems to have rubbed a few people up the wrong way, whereas everyone who met Lloyd seems to have liked him very much. Hence any criticism of the man seems painful, as he was obviously an amiable and helpful chap.

Was it thanks to Lloyd that folk song LPs tended to include detailed liner notes, giving song provenance details? He seems to have been responsible for a lot of the Topic sleeve notes, and I'm very grateful that this approach became the norm.

I have sometimes wondered, though, reading through some of his comments, if he occasionally embellished some of the information on the sleevenotes. I don't have examples to hand, and I may be entirely wrong, but I remember one or two 'facts' about songs that seemed highly speculative to me.