Dame Janet Baker: ‘One of the truly great  privileges is to spend one’s working life among charismatic, interesting and gifted people. It has clearly been the experience of Robert Ponsonby during his many years of artistic administration and he writes about it with obvious delight...How refreshing...to read [his] collection of portraits which steer such a well-judged course between the light and darker sides of the human condition and give us a balanced picture of his subjects. He has a delightful turn of phrase and describes aspects of character which I found immediately recognizable and true. It is all done with wit, perception, kindness, honesty, affection and humour, leaving this reader wanting more.’

Bryce Morrison in The Gramophone, September 2009: 'This delightful book by one of music's most admired administrators is perfectly summarised by Dame Janet Baker...in her characteristically warm-hearted introduction... Throughout [the book] there is an often moving wish to share a lifetime of involvement and dedication to the arts; to celebrate true greatness and to disparage many more recent attititudes and events. Ponsonby takes a sharp sword to the ever-threatening forces of philistinism...There is a superb chapter on Boulez's approach to the whole nature of conducting...[His]warmth and candour shine through at every point...'

Kenneth Walton in The Scotsman: 'Robert Ponsonby's newly published memoirs, Musical Heroes, are not so much a self-promotional nostalgia trip as a generous testament to the many classical music celebrities he has encountered over half a century as one of the UK's leading arts supremos.
<>At the core of this book are generous personal reflections on family friend Sir Adrian Boult, the irascible Sir William Walton, such legendary performers and composers as Jacqueline du Pré (photographed informally in his Glasgow flat with Daniel Barenboim and former SNO leader Sam Bor playing piano trios), Yehudi Menuhin, John Ogden, Pierre Boulez, Michael Tippett and many more.'

Andrew Clark in FT critics' 'hottest holiday reading' on 3rd July 2009: 'Ponsonby’s essays sum up a golden era of music-making. He gives us fly-on-the-wall portraits of the great musicians he knew in the course of a postwar career that took him from directing the Edinburgh Festival 
to the BBC Proms.'

Michael Church in Classical Music, July 2009 (four stars): '...His obituary of Kent Opera – killed by the Arts Council because it didn’t fit its popularising plans – is a fitting homage to that groundbreaking institution, and his article for the Times on running the Proms is a more cogent apologia than we have ever had from his successors...along the way we get a lovely gallery of
portraits, from Walton to Henze and Berio, sweet Sidonie Goossens and mysterious Clara Haskil to
magisterial William Glock, and a most accurately drawn John Drummond. The coda is a long
interview with Pierre Boulez about conducting: this alone is a commendation for the book.'

Caroline Gray (London), five-star review on Amazon.co.uk: 'This is a delightful book. It's perfect to dip into to find out more about the musical giants of the twentieth century, and all described through first-hand experience. The interview with Pierre Boulez is a treat.
<> Witty, entertaining and beautifully written, the book makes perfect holiday and/or bedside reading, and is ideal as a birthday or Christmas present for a musical friend.'

David Gutman in International Record Review, November 2009: '...Ponsonby's mixture of informed enthusiasm and polite scepticism is a refreshing change from the commercially driven posturing so often passing for cultural commentary these days. His prose is lucid...The book concludes with [this] rallying cry: "Music, and of course I mean 'classical music', because it is both the most mysterious, the most moving and the most difficult of the arts, is without doubt the greatest of them, and musicians therefore have a specially honourable responsibility. They are, by and large, an extraordinarily nice lot, intelligent, interesting, companionable, and I am unshakeably on their side. They have my profound respect, my wholehearted good wishes -- and my affection." Does it matter that he is preaching to the converted?...Readers of this magazine will be with him all the way.'