Katharine Whitehorn on Private Passions with Michael Berkeley 21st February 2016

A chance to hear Michael Berkeley talk to the veteran journalist, Katharine Whitehorn, who died in January 2021 at the age 92. In this programme from 2016, Katherine Whitehorn talks about the music she loved all her life.

She’s often quoted as saying: ‘Find out what you like doing best and get someone to pay you for it.’ Katharine explains that she had quite a few false starts along the way - running away from school, failing as an architecture student, dabbling in modelling - until she found her true vocation of journalism and began a career that has spanned Picture Post, the Observer and Saga Magazine.

She was also known to millions as the author of Cooking in a Bedsitter, first published in 1961 and still the bible of student cookery.

Her music choices include Finlandia, invoking memories of another - happy - false start; a piece of Chopin played by her father; Mozart and Beethoven symphonies; and one of the few songs she and her much-loved husband Gavin Lyall both enjoyed.

Producer: Jane Greenwood

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3