Geoffrey Tandy Geoffrey Tandy Geoffrey A. Tandy (1900–1969) was a British marine biologist and broadcaster. Tandy graduated from Oxford University in 1921, and pursued graduate studies at Birkbeck College, in the University of London. He was employed at the Natural History Museum in London from 1926 to 1948, specialising in the biology of algae, after which he worked for the British Foreign Office until 1954. A friend of T. S. Eliot, Tandy wrote a "Broadcasting Chronicle" for "The Criterion", and was the first to broadcast "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats" in 1937. During the Second World War he worked at Bletchley
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats Scheffler (2009). The contents of "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats", along with the names of the featured cats where appropriate, are: In 1954, English composer Alan Rawsthorne set six of the poems in a work for speaker and orchestra entitled "Practical Cats", which was recorded soon afterwards, with the actor Robert Donat as the speaker. At about the same time another English composer, Humphrey Searle, composed another narrated piece based on the poems, using flute, piccolo, cello and guitar. This work, "Two Practical Cats", consists of settings of the poems about Macavity and Growltiger. The best-known musical adaptation of