The story of how one particular piano recital changed the course of the author’s life and inspired her to overcome her fear of flying and to travel to more than twenty European countries over a period of twenty-three years to listen to one very special pianist.

It describes not only the fascinating places she visited, the people she met, the friendships she cultivated, the comical and at times far less amusing things that happened to her, the kindnesses and the catastrophes, but also her impressions of the performances she attended, the diversity of venues in which those performances took place and the vagaries of audience behaviour.

It’s the story of someone approaching late middle age whose life suddenly turned into an amazing adventure, told with candour and humour.

Barbara Truman lives in Birmingham, the city of her birth, although she has lived in other parts of the country and for a while in Australia. In recent years her leisure time has been largely devoted to travelling around Europe and listening to music.

In March 2020 at the start of the pandemic she retired from a sixty-year secretarial career during which she worked in the fields of commerce, accountancy and the law. With time on her hands she decided it was the ideal moment to start writing this book.