Play It Again

Extraordinary… Prepare to be inspired * Sunday Telegraph *Bernard Levin once told me that journalism was “half gossip, half obsession, half slog and half madness”. If that’s true Play it Again is a minor classic from a major hack…it’s about a stressed, insanely busy middle-aged person finding time to cultivate a hobby and discovering that his inner fire has been rekindled. That’s a lesson we all need. – Richard Morrison * The Times *As soon as you enter the pages you are hooked, not just by the efforts to overcome this elusive piece through curiousity and courage, but by the clear way in which the diary takes the reader into the murky world of WikiLeaks and the still more polluted waters of phone hacking by News International… Riveting stuff… Play It Again is a hugely enjoyable, touching and informative volume * Literary Review *An absorbing and technically detailed book… Rusbridger is a vivid writer who is able to make the physical experience of playing the piano…very gripping. – Nicholas Kenyon * Times Literary Supplement *In his page-turning diary, Chopin has to make room for Julian Assange, Leveson and the hacking scandal… This charming, nimble, book argues that a life cannot be too rounded nor a day too full. * Daily Telegraph *In this dazzling, dizzying memoir, one of the world’s leading newspaper editors tells of learning to play Chopin’s formidable Ballade in G Minor against a backdrop of phone hacking and Wikileaks espionage. The day-to-day counterpoint of piano practice and breaking news is a compositional feat in itself: you have the impression of a wide-awake, fearless mind. – Alex RossExtraordinary… Simply looked at as a repository of information on how to perform Chopin, the book is invaluable… Much the most interesting aspect of the book, however is in the main intellectual investigation and defence of the amateur…prepare to be inspired. – Igor Toronyi-Lalic * Sunday Telegraph *Play It Again is based on Rusbridger’s diaries and in pianistic terms is a two-handed one, one part being an account of the travails of learning the Ballade, the other chronicling a feverish journalistic year… The point of the exercise was never to play like a professional but to relish being an amateur. In this sense his book is affirmatory… 4 stars – Michael Prodger * Mail on Sunday *Play It Again turns out to be surprisingly pleasing, not only to the mind’s ear but to the heart and even, at a pinch, to the soul…it is about determination – determination to do something fiendishly hard and almost entirely pointless, and having the courage to stare down failure every day… His obsession is both charming and infectious. – Lucy Kellaway * Financial Times *The two really appealing things about this book are Rusbridger’s deep love of music and his dogged belief that it is possible to find time for things such as piano practice, even for the most frenetically busy. – Christopher Hart * Sunday Times *

Alan Rusbridger is Editor in Chief of the Guardian and a keen amateur musician. After reading English at Cambridge he started on a local newspaper and tried his hand at a range of journalistic jobs - including reporter, columnist, critic, foreign correspondent, magazine editor, features editor and, from 1995, editor. During his time editing the Guardian the paper has won numerous awards and has grown to be one of the three largest online newspapers in the world. He led the paper’s coverage of the secret WikiLeaks cables and the Guardian’s campaign to get at the truth about phone hacking, which led to numerous resignations, the closure of the News of the World and the Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practice and ethics of the British press.

As a boy, he was a cathedral chorister, a reasonable orchestral clarinetist and a very mediocre pianist. He failed to be a world-class conductor, abandoned the organ and put his clarinets in the attic. In his mid 40s he restarted piano lessons and tried to make up for more than 30 years of missing technique. Since then, he has moved from ‘very mediocre’ to ‘mediocre’.

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