Eric Tomlinson explains: "The whole story is that I was running the music recording studio at Anvil Denham in England (which was the old Korda studios and then became Anvil Films, where we did a lot of good film music)…The lease came up, expired, we had to move, and there were many, many tapes left in the archives in the storage room. I went round to see if there was anything there of any interest, and to my horror I saw William Walton's tapes still on the shelf. And I thought, 'Well they can't stay there, you know? Bulldozers are coming in tomorrow, and [that'll be the end of that], so I just put them in my car and took them home and they stayed in my garage for about 3 or 4 years, until I happened to mention it to somebody.

"The film had been released and that was it, you know; it was all over and done with. I mentioned it to a guy at Silva Screen Records, who expressed an interest in hearing them… We played them, and he said, could he put out the album? And I replied, 'Well it's nothing to do with me, it's MGM. I just sort of rescued the tapes; an international rescue, as it was."

But as Timothy Gee continues, album producer David Wishart said there was no reason to worry. "'We have cleared the rights with United Artists, and got the Ron Goodwin music as well,' and that was when I got the disc," adds Gee, citing Ryko's CD of the two scores as proof there was little need to commission a new recording or reconstruction, since the original recording sessions conducted by Malcolm Arnold not only existed, but were accessible - but to a point.

"I don't think they withstood many, many playings," adds Tomlinson. "I think they were transferred out quickly to digital and kept that way… They had been in my garage for 5 years, and although it wasn't damp in there, it was cold and [had] fluctuating temperatures... and that doesn't do a lot of good to tapes."

A common problem with certain brands of recording tape from the 1960s and 1970s is a gradual degeneration as the emulsion peels off the base. By heating the tapes (affectionately called "baking"), one can gain one or perhaps a lucky 3 playbacks before the tapes are thoroughly useless.

"That had been done to another tape I had found," continues Tomlinson. "I had it 'cooked' by Ampex, and that seemed to work alright, but there were times with early tape where as you played it, the azimuth heads got locked up, and by then end of it, all you could hear was something coming from under a blanket."

Once MGM made the decision to create an alternate mix with Walton's original cues, Timothy Gee proved to be the project's most valuable consultant.

Explains Gee, "Julie Feldman is the lady who actually came over to this country said that they couldn't have done it without me. I certainly realize that there is probably nobody alive who could have done it, because for the bits that Wishart wrote to go with the Rykodisc score, he told me that he hadn't had a copy of the film, and he had to allocate names which were never allocated in the first place. He didn't really know where the particular pieces of music fitted; there is one piece which he called "Scramble," which he puts well down the line, but is which actually the opening piece of music.

"One other thing that had ticked off my thinking in that direction [of the Walton restoration] was of course Blade Runner had been re-released in the Director's Cut… Well I knew there wasn't [additional footage for] Battle of Britain, but I did know that with which [director Guy Hamilton] concerned in letter - he talked about Walton's carefully crafted score and so forth - and that it could be released as the Director's Preferred Soundtrack… [the one] Guy prefers to the one that went out as 'the pick & mix version.'"

Both Gee and Tomlinson are very clear in expressing the utmost respect for Goodwin's score - a solid work in its own right - and MGM's decision to include the alternate score isn't an attempt at revisionism, but a special opportunity to watch the same film scored by two very distinct, and very exceptional musical talents.

Remixed in Dolby 5.1 (the dialogue remains in mono, with the mono sound effects slightly enhanced for simulated spatial depth), Eric Tomlinson finds the upgraded music mix is quite faithful to his original approach. Walton's score was "originally recorded just onto 3-track half-inch tape, interlocked with the picture… Just in left-right-and centre stereo, and that's the way I used to work in those days before 48-track and all that sort of thing came in… You just put it up on 2 speakers, and it was a finished recording, theoretically. No mixing afterwards, just transferring."

The new Battle Of Britain is well worth acquiring, if not for the music scores (with Goodwin's own music given a similar 5.1 treatment), than certainly for the spectacle in seeing vintage aircraft recreating jaw-dropping combat dog-fighting.

The longer version of this article in MFTM 's Issue 43 addresses some of the differing qualities between both scores (recently reissued by Varese Sarabande from the previous Ryko CD). We thought we should close, however, with some final words by Tomlinson that weren't wholly germane to the longer piece.

"Just before I left," recalls Tomlinson, Anvil Denham "was closed down, and one of the managers went round looking at all the shelves to see what he could re-sell to new clients. Of course a lot of this stuff was originally recorded on 35mm - not onto tape, but onto 3-track [magnetically-coated 35mm film stock] - and unfortunately there were 2 scores there: one by Alex North for the film 2001 , and also another score by Frank Cordell for the film 2001, which Kubrick had set up at the time as tryouts to see what sort of music he wanted in his film.

"Unfortunately one of the managers went around and said 'That's all virgin stock We can sell that again to somebody,' so it was all bulk-erased, rather sadly. Particularly the Alex North one. I mean, Alex North was no mean composer, and it would have been great to have heard that. I never did hear that, unfortunately. I didn't record that; I was away doing something else at the time. It was all erased."