To go alongside my new book, The Guardian has commissioned an article from me about the history of the nocturne. You can read the article here and it should be in the print edition tomorrow, Wednesday 1 April.

One nice thing about online articles is that they can include several illustrations for which there isn’t room in the print edition. Thus the online version is headed with a lovely Whistler nocturne painting – which also appears in the book.

There are other photos too – including a good one I hadn’t seen before of a Max Richter performance. I wonder which photos, if any, will accompany the print version?