• Composed by Ennio Morricone
• Music Box Records / 2014 / 51m

I realise that not everyone can be multilingual.  Some people travel through life without ever leaving their home town, let alone their country, so it is easy to forgive them for not expanding their horizons by learning a foreign tongue.  Indeed, frequently on my international travels – as I converse with the locals as if I am a native myself – I witness people from English-speaking countries make not even a slight effort to defer to their generous hosts, simply expecting them to respond in English.  Increasingly, these people manage to get by seemingly without considerable difficulty.  So even if the practical benefit is not what it once was, the cultural benefit is incalculable – there is no way to appreciate a Spanish poem from the Moorish period in all its glory if one reads a limp English translation.  Another great benefit to being a master of so many languages is that I know when I purchase the soundtrack album to a foreign-language film, exactly what I’m getting.  Decades of schooling in the language of my nation’s great friends from across the English Channel now allow me to translate Le Profesionnel – in English it approximates to The Professional.