As August approaches, Edinburgh is suddenly full of posters advertising the thousands of Festival and Fringe events about to be unleashed upon us. You can feel the city is about to overflow with visitors. One of the most popular of the several festivals which co-exist in the city in August is the Book Festival which […]

Last night the Edinburgh International Book Festival launched its 2019 programme, and what a programme! Writers from every corner of the world will be coming to Edinburgh to discuss topics from politics, nature and storytelling to history, fashion, poetry and activism. There’s also a huge strand devoted to children’s books. Seeing the children enjoying the […]

One of my Christmas presents was a memoir, ‘Divided Loyalties – a Scotswoman in occupied France’ by Janet Teissier du Cros. It was written by an Edinburgh-born woman who married a Frenchman and spent the years of the Second World War in the Cévennes region of France during the German occupation. In her Edinburgh years, […]

The Times Literary Supplement of January 4 has a lovely review of my book ‘Speaking the Piano‘. Because of the subscriber paywall, only a snippet of the review is publicly accessible online, but here’s a photo of the review as it appears in print. And here’s an excerpt: ‘Tomes is a celebrated classical pianist, renowned […]

Australia’s leading arts magazine, Limelight, carries a review of my book Speaking the Piano ‘Tomes offers warm, thoughtful insights into the art of teaching’ ‘Speaking the Piano explores more than simply the nuts and bolts of mastering an instrument – it tries to harness the ineffable magic of making music, and the ways in which […]