The Cello and the Nightingales
The Life of Beatrice Harrison
Edited by Patricia Cleveland-PeckBeatrice Harrison
Available as Paperback, eBook
9 May 2024
The memoirs of cello prodigy Beatrice Harrison, the woman who brought the music of the nightingale to millions worldwide - and created the first interspecies collaboration
In May 1924, the BBC broadcast a miracle to the world: a wild nightingale singing a duet with a remarkable young cellist called Beatrice Harrison. Over a million people tuned in to hear this live performance, which Beatrice repeated with a nightingale for the BBC every spring until 1942. These broadcasts transformed the public interest in nightingales – a species already in decline.
If Beatrice’s duets with the nightingales touched a chord with the world, her own life proved to be as musical, free-spirited and inspiring. From her early years as a musical prodigy to recording with the most important composers of the day and playing for the wounded in the Second World War, this timely reissue of Patricia Cleveland-Peck’s classic book recounts Beatrice’s rich life vividly and features a new introduction by Maria Popova.
“A woman not ahead of her time but beyond it”
Maria Popova
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“A cultural moment not dissimilar to the moon landing”
Sam Lee
“Beatrice Harrison played while birds sang and she played while bombs fell during the Blitz. An indomitable musician with this blissful innocent spirit”
Stephen Nachmanovitch
Edited by Patricia Cleveland-PeckBeatrice Harrison
Patricia Cleveland-Peck is the bestselling author of twenty-four children’s books, including You Can’t Take an Elephant on the Bus, a radio play and a stage play inspired by Beatrice’s story, and also writes travel pieces and non-fiction books. She came to know the Harrison family when living in a cottage on their estate at Smallfield, Surrey. It was while researching a biography of the four Harrison sisters that she discovered Beatrice’s unpublished autobiography. She lives near East Grinstead, Sussex.
