Proms turn took me back to my nights of terror

WATCHING this year’s Proms, I was suddenly transported back decades as the National Youth Orchestra struck up with Gustav Holt’s The Planets.

- Peter Mortimer

The opening part of this is Mars, God of War, which still has the power to chill me to the bone.

As a youngster, I first heard this music as the introduction to the television drama series Quatermass - and as well as the cryogenic effects of the music itself on my bones, even now, typing the word Quatermass still makes my blood run colder than the North Sea in February.

I was then but an impressionable youth and the drama series haunted me and gave me sleepless nights.

I'm still capable of the occasional cold sweat at the memories of that first Quatermass series, and I’m not sure any horror film, no matter the size of its budget, or the amount of blood and gore, has ever had the same effect.

I had then no idea that Mars was written by Gustav Holst (who I'd never heard of) nor that it was part of his work The Planets, nor indeed that I was being affected by what was considered classical music, a cultural area pretty alien to the young bloods of Sherwood council estate in Nottingham whose lives revolved around football, beer and lasses.