Vernon Handley, who died at his Monmouth home on Wednesday, was probably the country’s best-loved conductor.

Admired by musicians and public alike, he was renowned for the integrity of his interpretations, his understanding of the orchestral process, and, above all, for his passion for British music.

He was a particular champion of the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams, Arnold Bax, and, more unexpectedly, Granville Bantock, the professor of music at Birmingham University and principal of the Birmingham School of Music, whose compositions Handley felt were greatly undervalued.

But his advocacy of music from these islands had an adverse effect upon invitations to conduct other composers.

“I’d love to conduct Prokofiev, Shostakovich,” he joked. “But everyone was terrified I’d end up making them sound like Vaughan Williams!”

A waspish sense of humour was one of 'Tod' Handley’s great charms (everyone knew him as “Tod”, a childhood nickname arising out of his being pigeon-toed, and “toddling” along). Another endearing quality was his absolute directness of expression, taking no nonsense from anyone and giving none back. That’s why orchestral players adored him.

And they adored him as well for the clarity of his stick technique, learned from that great conductor of British music Sir Adrian Boult, with whom he studied privately, and who became his mentor.

Handley had not in fact trained as a musician, and used proudly to describe himself as entirely self-taught (his piano teacher mother described him as unteachable). He did some conducting at school in Enfield (where he was born in 1930), and after the intervention of National Service went up to Oxford to read English philology at Balliol College.

But conducting was already his obsession, giving so many concerts whilst at the university that he barely achieved his degree.

Bits and pieces conducting of amateur ensembles followed, until Boult, melted by Handley’s expression of enthusiasm for the music of Holst, began to take an interest in the young man’s musical development, and in 1961 secured him his first professional engagement, with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.

As a result of the success of that concert many invitations from other orchestras followed, and in 1962 Handley obtained his first full-time appointment. This was as musical director to the Borough of Guildford, with responsibility for the semi-professional Guildford Philharmonic Orchestra.

Handley soon transformed this into a professional outfit, attracting many top London players, and embarking upon a famous series of recordings of British music which drew increasing critical acclaim.

Other labels and other orchestras both at home and abroad engaged him for recordings and performances, and by this time he was also teaching conducting at the Royal College of Music. Finally in 1985 he became principal conductor of the Ulster Orchestra, his first “real” permanent post with a first-class orchestra, where he remained until 1989.

Vernon Handley received many awards, one of them for his recording of the Elgar Violin Concerto on the Classics for Pleasure label, with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the young Nigel Kennedy.

Returning to the BBC Proms after a 20-year absence this summer, Kennedy particularly stipulated that Handley to be asked to conduct his performance of the Elgar Concerto, but in the event Handley had to withdraw through illness. An horrendous car accident in Germany many years ago had left his health weakened, and withdrawal from concerts was becoming a distressing regularity.

But recently a new lease of life had come to Tod Handley, honoured with the CBE in 2004 and a Lifetime Achievement Award at last year’s Classical Brits, and, after rescuing a four-day Elgar Festival with the English Symphony Orchestra in June 2006, the announced conductor having dropped out, invited in January 2007 to become principal conductor of the Worcestershire-based orchestra.

Since then he had given several highly successful concerts with the ESO, and was planning a series of recordings with them, beginning with orchestral music by John Joubert, whom he regarded as a much undervalued composer. That passion for British music again.