"An ideal 'first book' on Beethoven" from one of the world's most eminent classical music aficionados ( Booklist).Beethoven scholar and classical radio host John Suchet has had a lifelong, ardent interest in the man and his music. Here, in his first full-length biography, Suchet illuminates the composer's difficult childhood, his struggle to maintain friendships and romances, his ungovernable temper, his obsessive efforts to control his nephew's life, and ...

Earlier this year John Suchet revealed that his beautiful 67-year-old wife Bonnie, the love of his life, is suffering from Dementia. During the past three years he has gone from lover to carer. And he has found that exceptionally tough. In this moving, and bitterly honest account, the newsreader reveals his loneliness and his despair.For John it was love at first sight. For many years he had admired Bonnie from afar, hoping and dreaming one day she would feel the same way. Nearly a...

We think we know the story of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's life. Austrian-born to a tyrannical father who worked him fiercely; unhappily married to a spendthrift woman; a child-like character ill at ease amid the aristocratic splendor of the Viennese court; a musical genius who died young thus depriving the world of future glories.Yet only that last point is actually true. In this comprehensive biography, John Suchet examines the many myths and misunderstandings surrounding the world's best-l...

A PRESTO BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024 ' From palaces to warzones, John Suchet goes on a Beethoven odyssey' The Daily Telegraph From the bestselling author of Beethoven: The Man Revealed, In Search of Beethoven is John Suchet' s latest and most personal book dedicated to the life of this extraordinary composer. Part biography, part memoir, part travelogue, Suchet draws on his own life and career as a foreign correspondent and news anchor to show how Beethoven' s music has accompanied him through t...

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky is one of the most successful composers that Russia has ever produced, but his path to success was not an easy one.A shy, emotional child, intended for the civil service by his father, Tchaikovsky came late to composing as a career, and despite his success he was a troubled character. Doubting himself at every turn, he was keenly wounded by criticism. The death of his mother haunted him all his life and his incessant attempts to suppress his homosexuality took a hu...

Giuseppe Verdi remains the greatest operatic composer that Italy, the home of opera, has ever produced. Yet throughout his lifetime he claimed to detest composing and repeatedly rejected it. He was a landowner, a farmer, a politician and symbol of Italian independence; but his music tells a different story.An obsessive perfectionist, Verdi drove collaborators to despair but his works lauded from the start as dazzling feats of composition and characterization. From Rigoletto to Otello, La T...

A reimagining of Hans Christian Andersen’s timeless fairytale,Wild Swans weaves spoken word and music into a spellbinding journey of courage, sacrifice, and transformation.When a young princess learns her eleven brothers have been cursed and turned into swans, she undertakes a perilous quest to save them. Bound by a vow of silence, guided only by her heart, and tested by the cruelty of those who fear what they cannot understand.Read by John Suchet OBE, acclaimed jo...

This "monumental" portrait of the man, his music, and the world in which he lived is "a truly remarkable biography" ( The Christian Science Monitor).Jan Swafford's biographies of Charles Ives and Johannes Brahms have established him as a revered music historian, capable of bringing his subjects vibrantly to life. His magnificent new biography of Ludwig van Beethoven, more than a decade in the making, peels away layers of legend to get to the living, breathi...

his is a wonderful true story about one family's life as they grew up and grew old. It was filled with love, laughter, trials, and the challenges that life gives.The biggest challenge came when she found herself with both parents in various stages of dementia. At times she felt helpless, but also knew that it was up to her to attempt to fulfill their needs, wants and desires.Time moved on and her father passed away, leaving her with her mom to care for. What would she do? W...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER | A Sports Illustrated Best Book of the Year | An NPR Best BookUPDATED EDITION INCLUDES THE STUNNING RISE OF McLARENIn The Formula, Wall Street Journal reporters Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg tell the riveting motor racing saga of how Formula 1 broke through in America. Taking you inside the paddock, The Formula details the eclectic culture of racing obsessives, glamorous set...

From the acclaimed composer and biographer Jan Swafford comes the definitive biography of one of the most lauded musical geniuses in history, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.At the earliest ages it was apparent that Wolfgang Mozart’s singular imagination was at work in every direction. He hated to be bored and hated to be idle, and through his life he responded to these threats with a repertoire of antidotes mental and physical. Whether in his rabidly obscene mode or not, Mozart was always...

What's it like to be the only son of a widowed mother who is sinking into the opaque fog of dementia, and who lives alone half a continent away?Robert Tell answers this question with compassion and humor. "Dementia Diary: A Caregiver's Journal,"reads like fiction and covers the fifteen year period from his father's shocking death in a department store to his mother's 92nd birthday.Laugh and cry with him as he takes away her car keys, helps her move into tiny quarters with a...