[Words and Music] is a sequel to the remarkable trilogy A Swarm in May, Choristers' Cake, and Cathedral Wednesday…. Has the magic been achieved yet again? No one is more conscious than William Mayne of the difficulty of maintaining the level of interest over a number of volumes and in Cathedral Wednesday he adopted the unusual and successful device of looking at the school through the eyes of a day-boy. Now we are back again as boarders and with the fabric of the cathedral playing a part in the story as it did in A Swarm in May. Readers must judge for themselves but I felt that he has once more met the challenge successfully, but one or two characters such as Trevithic are becoming more remote and vague—time they moved on to their public schools perhaps. The style is just as lucid, clear and clever, and a delight as usual; most of the characters drawn by the author show that he understands the workings of a prep schoolboy's mind as perhaps no one else does. (pp. 206-07)