Q&A Chaired by Paul Harper

At four years old, Caroline Sanderson fell in love with the music of Mozart after listening to it with her father. At eight, she fell even harder for the songs of David Bowie. Her dad made many gentle attempts to persuade her to back to his world of classical music, but it wasn’t until after he died that she returned to it, in memory of him.

Listen with Father: How I Learned To Love Classical Music tells of how she set out to listen, with great care and attention, to the music her dad loved, to work out why he so appreciated it and whether she could too. In a beguiling blend of memoir and biography, Sanderson explores the music of composers from Igor Stravinsky to Clara Schumann and Frédéric Chopin, hearing Mozart recitals in Salzburg, visiting Sibelius’s house near Helsinki and playing Robert Schumann at home on the piano.

Beautifully touching and absorbing, Listen with Father is a story of a beloved father, told through the classical music he cherished.

Caroline Sanderson is a non-fiction writer, editor and books journalist. Based in the Cotswolds, she regularly interviews writers on stage, on the page, and for podcasts. Caroline is well-known in the book trade and beyond for her author profiles and her non-fiction previews for The Bookseller which she has compiled each month for over 20 years. She also writes reviews, features and interviews for a wide variety of other publications including The Express, Mslexia, The Observer and The Mail on Sunday. Programme Director of Stroud Book Festival, Caroline regularly chairs events at book festivals and in bookshops, mostly recently for Hay Festival, Edinburgh International Book Festival, and Cheltenham Literature Festival; and for Waterstones, Daunts and Toppings. Caroline is also an experienced broadcaster and public speaker. She can regularly be heard on BBC Radio Gloucestershire talking about books, and has made many other television and radio appearances, including BBC Radio 4’s Open Book and Front Row, and even a live interview on Breakfast TV in Poland. Caroline is an Associate Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund and has led writing skills workshops in a variety of NHS workplace contexts, including for Barts Hospital and the Royal College of Nursing. From 2022-204 she was RLF Writer in Residence at Somerset NHS Foundation Trust.

PAUL HARPER:
Paul Harper lives in Stroud where he writes about art and music and likes a good chat. He has published widely in academic journals, books and artist’s catalogues. He teaches Research Skills, and Critical and Contextual Studies in the School of Art and Design at Middlesex University