Anne Macnaghten

Anne Macnaghten, CBE (9 August 1908 – 31 December 2000) was a British classical violinist and pedagogue.

Education Anne was the youngest daughter of high court judge Sir Malcolm Macnaghten. She was born in Whitwick, Leicestershire, and grew up in Northern Ireland and Kensington, London. She began her violin studies at the age of six with Hungarian soloist Jelly d'Arányi. Macnaghten later stated in an interview with The Strad that d'Arányi "wasn't really a very good teacher". The quartet premièred works of several well-known composers as part of the concert series, including Sinfonietta, Op. 1 by Benjamin Britten in 1933, Tippet's String Quartet No. 1 in 1935, the String Quartet No 3 by Mary Lucas and works by Gerald Finzi, Elizabeth Maconchy, and Alan Rawsthorne.

After the war the Quartet re-formed, with Arnold Ashby as cellist. He became her second husband in 1947. The ensemble became involved in music education activities, holding a series of demonstration concerts in schools, initially in Barking (1945-7), then in Ealing (1948-53), Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire.

Macnaghten received a Gold Medal from the Worshipful Company of Musicians in 1962, and in 1987 was appointed a CBE in recognition of her work in education.

Personal life Her first husband was James Ernest Skilbeck, an outspoken communist who fought in the Spanish Civil War against Franco. She married her second husband, cellist Arnold Ashby in 1947: he died in 1994. There was a son from her first marriage (John, born 1942) and a daughter from her second (Catherine, born 1947). Their address in the 1960s was Meadhall, Little Walden in Saffron Walden. By the late 1960s they had moved to 23 Wymondley Road, Hitchin. From the late 1970s onwards, Anne Macnaghten was teaching violin in Hertfordshire, stopping only as a result of a fall at the age of ninety. She died two years later.