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In lockdown, the Observer’s classical music critic began work on a book about the Russian composer’s later years – celebrated as a pianist but homesick and writing little. Then war, and events in her own life, began to reshape the narrativeAll life goes into a book. Unless it’s a kiss’n’tell, this truth may bypass the reader. A study of steam trains or tax systems or, in my case, the Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninov (I’ll come back to the spelling) will seep into the crevices of a writer’s daily existence even if the resulting text appears harnessed in cool objectivity. Decisions are made, anecdotes abandoned because of a plumbing disaster, a knock at the door or a burnt cake. Words scuttle round your head at night and you wonder what possessed you.Where does it all start? I had to retrieve my old diary to remember how (on earth), in January 2021, I agreed to deliver, 15 months later, 90,000 words on Rachmaninov for publication this year. It was the start of the second year of lockdown. The diary was virtually empty. Appointments were on Zoom, concerts I hoped to review mostly cancelled. I had checklists about my father, in his 90s, living alone far away: what was he eating apart from tins of rice pudding and chocolate biscuits? Could he get a vaccine? I can’t remember what the rules were for visiting by that time, but all encounters were a risk: my husband, the artist Tom Phillips RA, had a long-term lung condition so was in the vulnerable category for Covid-19. Continue reading...