Alexander 'Sandy' Faris was born to a Presbyterian minister and his school-mistress wife on 11 June 1921 in County Tyrone. He read music at Clare College, Cambridge, before war service with the Irish Guards and after demobilization resumed his musical studies at the Royal College of Music in London and - via a scholarship - The Juilliard School in New York. He subsequently conducted and arranged for the Royal Ballet, the Carl Rosa Opera Company and, briefly, for the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and in the 1980s was the musical director for a television series 'The Gilbert and Sullivan Collection' which presented 11 of their comic operas. To many though his best known contribution is the music for long-running period serial 'Upstairs, Downstairs'. Alexander Faris died on 28 September 2015. He was unmarried.