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Educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he read French and German Literature, he first joined the BBC's Third Programme in 1952, but left in 1960.
Other performances during this period included the soprano solo parts in Bach's Mass in B minor, Handel's Messiah and Brahms' A German Requiem, and solo recitals for the BBC Third Programme including Handel's Lusinghe piu care and Richard Strauss's Ständchen.
The poet W. H. Auden praised him highly in a radio broadcast on the BBC Third Programme in June 1961 (the text of the broadcast was published in The Listener of 8 June 1961).