Bookwork

KEYS TO A PASSIONAT Aye Write! book festival in Glasgow this week – just as, Bookworm is reliably informed, at the Bath Literary Festival last weekend – Janice Galloway was in spellbinding form, reading from her Collected Stories with panache.

Her love of performance, it turns out, has deep roots. While other writers and readers interviewed in The Book That Changed My Life (published last week by Luath, price 6.99) pick out more literary choices, Galloway plumps for one her mother bought for her, John W Schaum's Piano Course Book A (The Red Book). Mr Schaum's introductory greeting "Good luck and years of happy playing!" moved the 11-year-old Galloway to tears.

She was taught by a Mrs Hughes, who lived in a sheltered flat with paper-thin walls. Together they would work through the eight-bar tunes, each of which had drawings that could be coloured in when they had been mastered. Those tunes were not special, but they led on to a lifelong love of music: "My first piano primer gave me a language of only seven letters, yet containing every sound imaginable."

A TOUR ON THE SIDE