The other day I gave a copy of one of my own CDs as a gift to some young musicians. They thanked me politely, but I caught them eyeing the CD with a certain blankness. Suddenly a thought occurred to me and I said, ‘…Don’t tell me you haven’t got CD players!’ They all shook […]

There’s so much talk about ‘fake news’ at the moment. Most of us are gradually getting better at spotting it. Fake news often seems to be accompanied by a certain style of presentation, which we often see in public speaking. Smiles that don’t arise from the inside. An over-developed sense of confidence and authority, a […]

I’ve just returned from a week in Germany, on the jury of the Joseph Joachim Chamber Music Competition in Weimar (see photo of the splendid Music Conservatory where it all happened). There were groups from most corners of the world. Many of them were living proof of the benefits of cross-European study. Although there were […]

Last weekend I was at a dinner in Christ’s College, Cambridge to celebrate 40 years of women in the college (founded 1505). Women have only been allowed to study at the University of Cambridge since 1869, when Girton College was founded. Newnham followed in 1872, but even for decades after that, women were not considered […]

I seem to have turned into the kind of person who stops what they’re doing in the afternoon in order to tune into live Parliamentary debates about Brexit. Last week I spent several afternoons listening to politicians giving speeches, scripted and unscripted. Being a trained musician is interesting on these occasions. I’m so used to […]