Enough
'Riveting and revelatory.' Philip Pullman
'Wonderfully vivid and touching.' Literary Review
'Warm, wise and unflinching.' Sunday Times
'Witty and heartfelt.' Financial Times
Stephen Hough is indisputably one of the world's leading pianists, winning global acclaim and numerous awards.
Enough recounts his unconventional coming-of-age story, from his beginnings in an unmusical home in Cheshire to the main stage of the Carnegie Hall in New York, aged just twenty-one.
'Hough writes like a dream, with an almost Alan Bennett-like eye and ear for the sights and sounds of childhood.' Dan Cairns, Sunday Times
'A memoir that is by turn audacious, harrowing, joyous, moving and funny . . . Hough [has a] brilliant ear for language, for rhythm, for silence.' Harriet Smith, Gramophone
'An endearingly humorous, entrancingly lyrical writer.' Peter Conrad, Observer
'Most memoirs give me far more than I want to know - this is the rare sort that left me urgently demanding a second volume, a third, a fourth. I loved it.' Philip Pullman
One of the most distinctive artists of his generation, Stephen Hough combines a distinguished career as a pianist with those of composer and writer. He was named by The Economist as one of Twenty Living Polymaths. He is the winner of numerous awards and was awarded a knighthood in the Queen's Platinum Jubilee Honours, 2022.
Hough has performed with many of the world's major orchestras, given recitals at the most prestigious concert halls and composed works for orchestra, choir, chamber ensemble and solo piano. Author of the award winning and highly praised Rough Ideas, he has written for the Guardian, the Times, the Telegraph, Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine. He lives in London, where he is a visiting professor at the Royal Academy of Music.