Upon returning from the War, Ward resumed work as an antiquarian book dealer. In 1949 he wrote to Percy Scholes, then living in Switzerland, to inquire about filling a vacency as Scholes's personal secretary.

Percy Scholes (1877-1958) spent much of his life working to make the pleasures of music available to as wide an audience as possible. Scholes is best known today for his voluminous Oxford Companion to Music (1938), although he also wrote The Puritans and Music (1934) and The Great Dr. Burney (1948).

Scholes was a thorough and precise writer, who approached his subject with a gentle wit. Paging through his Oxford Companion to Music reveals a number of humorous entries, including his famous essay on "applause" which begins "The custom of showing one's pleasure at beautiful music by immediately following it with an ugly noise."

Upon Scholes's death in 1958, Time Magazine captured his writing style perfectly (one wonders if the obituary might have been written by Ward himself):

"Died. Percy Alfred Scholes, 81, British music critic and historian, witty, unorthodox, occasionally prissy lexicographer, who wrote the entire 1,195-page Oxford Companion to Music in Switzerland. Most novels are duller than Dr. Scholes's reference book, in which harmony is "the clothing of melody" and "form is one of the composer's chief means of averting the boredom of his audience."

While Ward's original letter introducing himself to Percy Scholes does not appear to have survived, Scholes's first letter of reply is included in the Ward Papers. His last sentence reflects the fatherly advice he would give Ward over the next few years.

Ward quickly wrote back, and provided Scholes with a brief, if rather modest, biography.

At the end of August 1949, Ward and Scholes met for the first time at Scholes's home in Switzerland, and early the next month Scholes hired Ward as his personal secretary at the rate of 500 pounds per year. The two men quickly formed a close working relationship, and as Scholes neared retirement, it became clear that Ward would take over editing the Oxford Companion. In several letters from around 1953, Scholes urges Ward to work on his writing: "When the time arrives for you to keep the Companion up to date you will require a greatly developed ability to write (a) interestingly and (b) clearly, and (c) precisely. Make yourself a list some time, of what you think are the qualities of the book that have made it the best seller it is. Can you at present reproduce those qualities?" (Scholes to Ward, 6 December [1953]).

Ward apparently took Scholes's advice and enrolled at St. Edmund Hall, Oxford (Scholes's own College at Oxford) earning his BA and MA in Modern Languages

Ward began looking for employment in the United States, no doubt as a result of his marriage to the American Maya Riviere in 1954. One of Scholes's letters of recommendation from 1956, makes clear just how much Ward had grown as writer and musician.