"Great" English composers? Why try to limit the list to three, four, six or
twenty-six? We could name that many "great" ones without blinking, by any
sensible definition - unless the criteria are akin to Readers Digest
World's Greatest Twenty Books.

Any short list which failed to find room for Tallis, Handel (mightiest of
all) Holst, Delius and Bax would fall at the first fence anyway.

I will of course refrain utterly from even mentioning Sullivan (in his own
field just as "great" as Offenbach, Strauss Jnr.  or even Chueca), Tippett,
Rubbra or - blessedly alive - Sir Peter Maxwell Davies!

By the by, I remember an amusing American Desk Diary produced a few years
ago which featured 52 portraits of "The World's Greatest Composers".  It
featured just two British ones - Elgar and ....  Samuel Coleridge Taylor.
There were six Americans.  Pause for thought ...  but then, why ever not?

Christopher Webber,  Blackheath, London,  UK.
http://www.nashwan.demon.co.uk/zarzuela.htm
"ZARZUELA!"