Writing his latest book Whole Notes was something Ed Ayres had to be coaxed into – but he admits that when he got down to it, it was “a joy” to actually write. It’s certainly a joy to read.

The popular ABC Classic broadcaster, who trained as a classical musician at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, the Royal Academy of Music in London and the Hochschule der Müsik in Berlin, and now teaches viola and cello, has written three previous books: Cadence about cycling from England to Hong Kong with only a violin for company; Danger Music, in which he described teaching music in Afghanistan for a year; and Sonam and the Silence, about a young girl in Kabul and the power of music.

Ed Ayres. Photo © Greville Patterson

He admits that writing another book wasn’t high on his ‘must-do’ agenda.

“I think that writing books is one of those things, where you write it and then say, ‘never again’, until someone comes to you with an idea,” he says.

“Mary Rennie at HarperCollins came to me with an idea to put my little notebooks [Ed’s Notebooks]  that...