Laura Cumming

The writer and art critic Laura Cumming talks to Michael Berkeley about the music and art she loves and the extraordinary story of her family.

Laura has been writing about art for The Observer for more than two decades, but her books suggest that at heart she’s really a detective. All three have unravelled mysteries: a missing Velázquez painting; the inner lives of great artists revealed through their self-portraits; and the secrets and lies which lay behind the kidnap of her mother, aged three, on a Lincolnshire beach in 1929.

She describes how her mother overcame childhood trauma and neglect to become an artist and the lynchpin of her own loving family. Her mother introduced Laura to classical music and she chooses a Chopin Nocturne and a performance by Andrés Segovia to remind her of the music they listened to together when she was growing up in Edinburgh.

Laura describes the emotional power of art and music, from the overpowering effect of her favourite painting by Velázquez to the music of Bach, Shostakovich, Mozart and the music of the Hebrides, where she spent childhood holidays.

And she reveals why, despite her passion for music, she can’t bear to go to concerts.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3