John Suchet | An Ode to the Joy of Beethoven
Sun 23 Nov 2025 | 2:00pm - 3:00pm
Ludwig van Beethoven has been a lifelong passion for television journalist and newscaster John Suchet. The bestselling author of Beethoven: The Man Revealed now returns with his most personal book yet, In Search of Beethoven.
Part biography, part memoir, part travelogue, this new work shows how Beethoven’s sublime music has accompanied John through the best and worst of times: from his youth as an adventurous, music-loving teenager to his years as a foreign correspondent, even as he entered Beirut in the grip of civil war. Along the way, Suchet revisits the streets, homes and concert halls of Bonn and Vienna, tracing the composer’s footsteps from his early years to his dying days.
Blending groundbreaking research into Beethoven’s ancestry, health and the enduring mystery of his deafness with Suchet’s own moving reflections, In Search of Beethoven vividly brings the great composer to life. This is a journey that reveals not just Beethoven the man, but the life-changing power of great music itself.
Venue: TTP Stage (Cambridge Union)
Duration: 1 hour
Tickets available soon.
Author Biography
John Suchet OBE is a bestselling author, journalist, radio and TV presenter. He was the voice of morning radio on Classic FM for almost a decade and before that, he was one of the UK’s best-known television journalists and newscasters, regularly presenting ITN’s flagship News at Ten for nearly 20 years. A recognised authority on Beethoven, he is the author of the Sunday Times bestselling Beethoven: The Man Revealed (2020), as well as biographies of Mozart, Strauss, Verdi and Tchaikovsky.
