FOR 30 years, I had the pleasure of presenting the Last Night of the Proms on BBC radio and television, and there was one moment which I always found especially moving.

This was when everyone in that vast arena who had a seat abandoned it to stand like the Promenaders for Land Of Hope And Glory. Huge though the Albert Hall is, it can bring an audience together in the most remarkable way and the singing of Elgar's great national anthem, however outdated some of the words may be, has the effect of uniting everyone on that extraordinary occasion - the musicians on that platform, those lucky enough to be present in the hall, and the millions watching or listening around the world.

Elgar was well aware that he had produced a winner in that melody and was proud of the fact. "I like to look on the composer's vocation as the old troubadours or bards did," he wrote. "In those days it was no disgrace to... inspire the people with a song. For my own part, I know that there are a lot of people who like to celebrate events with music. To these people I have given tunes. Is that wrong?"

In May 1901, Elgar played his first Pomp And Circumstance March on the piano for a young girl called Dora Penny who liked to improvise dances to his piano playing (she became the Dorabella of the Enigma Variations).

"Child, come up here," the composer called to her. "I've got a tune that will knock 'em flat."

Later that year, three days after the first performance of the march in Liverpool, Henry Wood introduced it at the Proms.

The audience went so wild that he had to play it three times - the only time such a thing ever happened to him. And that was before any words were added to the piece. The march's trio tune became Land Of Hope And Glory with verses by AC Benson when it was incorporated into the Coronation Ode, which Elgar wrote to celebrate the coronation of King Edward VII.

It's been said that this came about at the suggestion of the king himself but the idea may have been advanced by Clara Butt, whose stentorian contralto voice became identified with the song in its early days.

Sir Malcolm Sargent introduced it as a community song at the Last Night of the Proms, where it seems to have become indispensable.

Attempts have been made to do without it or to change the jingoistic words, but there it still remains, with Elgar's great tune ringing in the ears of the countless people around the world "who like to celebrate events with music".

By Richard Baker, Ex-BBC Proms presenter