The Solitaries

Unfortunately, parents can’t solely rely on schools to deliver results. The evidence in the book states that “what happens outside, not inside, the school gates” and “stable and supportive home background” are key for academic success. Work needs to be done at home, and not just the homework (which is more important in secondary than primary). Children need help with their mindset, motivation, and efforts, and to “light the creative or sporting spark”. Elliot Major believes that “children should devote as much time to arts and sports as to scholarly study” as they are “central to human development”. I could not agree more and instantly felt better about myself as a parent educator by the end of chapter seven.

The research on attainment of summer born children was eye opening. It is disappointing that our rigid system needs that much challenging. But there are things that can be done- don’t be

Wherever you are on your child’s educational journey, the knowledge and advice in this book are valuable. There is even a little quiz at the end for readers, which took me completely by surprise, but I did well. I will be re-reading this book as my child grows and in moments of parenting doubts, and will continue to empower my inner Good Parent Educator.

Evgenia Lazareva

A Life in Music

György Pauk

THE STRAD SHOP, £15

Iwas looking forward to reading this book which charts Memories of 80 years with the violin, but publication was delayed due to the pandemic. Everyone knows that the classical music community has really suffered as many of those earning their living in the sector are self- employed and demand for their services collapsed. As for the students preparing to follow in György Pauk’s footsteps, they are anxiously wondering what the future holds for them. This book is inspirational.

Born in Budapest shortly before World War II, György Pauk suffered the loss of both his parents in the Holocaust. He spent the remaining years of the war in the care of his grandmother in the spartan confines of Budapest Ghetto. Showing extraordinary musical talent from an early age, he began to learn the violin and was admitted to the Liszt Academy at the age of only 13.

After winning several international violin competitions, Pauk defected from Soviet-controlled Hungary, claiming asylum in Paris and becoming a ‘stateless person’ at the age of 22. He met and married his young Hungarian wife in Amsterdam. The couple moved to London on the advice of Yehudi Menuhin, gaining British citizenship in 1967.

Over the course of more than 50 years, György Pauk became an internationally-acclaimed concert violinist, appearing worldwide with the greatest orchestras and conductors,

In this absorbing account of his professional and personal life, György Pauk tells us about many of the other instrumentalists, conductors, orchestras and composers he has known and worked with.

Alongside his perpetual globe-trotting, Pauk has been a devoted husband (for more than 60 years), father and grandfather, and retains friendships across the world stretching back as far as the 1940’s.

Pauk decided that all proceeds from the sale of his book will be distributed to charities supporting young classical musicians.

Ronel Lehmann

Ticket to Ride Sir Peter Lampl

HARPER COLLINS, £20

Going on a trip with Ticket to Ride seemed like a good idea. The train journey was slow compared to reading at speed about an exceptional entrepreneur who regales readers with a compelling memoir. Sir Peter takes us on his inspiring journey from a Yorkshire Council estate, via Oxford and the Boston Consulting Group to New York, in the buccaneering dollar-mad Eighties, where he sets up a leveraged buy-out firm, which nearly goes bust and then finally, in the year it comes good, he ends up living next door to Keith Richards and out-earning Sir Mick Jagger. However, returning to Britain after 20 years Peter finds a vastly changed country, one in which the chances for bright kids from low-income backgrounds have plummeted.

And then there are those who stand alone and learned to be solitary early –they move along the back-lanes taller, or they’ll be off to one side in the briars finding another way round, the hurly-burly is too loud for them, the consensus something which feels wrong to them at the bone.

In response, he puts his business aside and devotes himself to founding the now greatly revered Sutton Trust, providing educational opportunities for large numbers of less well-off children, influencing government policy and putting social mobility at the heart of the national conversation. The guard arrived to check tickets, it was tempting to waive the book cover and at the same time beckon other travellers to purchase a copy of this inspirational read.

Ronel Lehmann

They scarcely seem to live among us. We admire them their little transient freedom, and sometimes rush from our tenements to stand at their empty door and bang the drum and summon them out. And they won’t come.

Why should they come, or commence to be how we wish them to be for our sakes?

They learned to be solitary early. They knew the crowd was impossible. They understood that our opinion is a flake –a thing we might call risible –when set against the truth that vests in solitude –and which, arrived at in the natural way, is commensurate with power, and with altitude.

Diego Murillo