In January 1948 he conducted the premiere of his wind band setting of "The Power of Rome and the Christian Heart", written for the Goldman Band to celebrate the 70th birthday of its founder. Afterwards, Grainger denigrated his own music as "commonplace" while praising Darius Milhaud's Suite Française, with which it had shared the programme.

On 10 August 1948, Grainger appeared at the London Proms, playing the piano part in his Suite on Danish Folksongs with the London Symphony Orchestra under Basil Cameron. On 18 September he attended the Last Night of the Proms, standing in the promenade section for Delius's Brigg Fair. Over the next few years several friends died: Gardiner in 1950, Quilter and Karen Holten in 1953. In October 1953 Grainger was operated on for abdominal cancer; his fight against this disease would last for the rest of his life. He continued to appear at concerts, often in church halls and educational establishments rather than major concert venues. In 1954, after his last Carnegie Hall appearance, Grainger's long promotion of Grieg's music was recognised when he was awarded the St. Olav Medal by King Haakon of Norway. However, a growing bitterness was becoming evident in his writings and correspondence; in a letter to his lifelong friend, the Danish composer Herman Sandby, he bemoaned the continuing ascendency in music of the "German form", and asserted that "all my compositional life I have been a leader without followers".