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The enthralling story of London’s most cherished concert hall and its cast of extraordinary characters.

Wigmore Hall is a modest building tucked away behind a busy shopping street. But inside lies something extraordinary: one of the world’s most beloved concert halls, within whose walls we find tales of exceptional performers, composers, impresarios and, of course, audiences. The story of Wigmore Hall is the story of music in the 20th and 21st centuries – and of London itself.

In this illuminating book, bestselling historian Julia Boyd digs deep into the hall’s past to discover the secrets of its enduring success. During its 125 years, Wigmore Hall has played an intrinsic role in the life of the city, reflecting its countless social changes both trivial and profound, providing musical sanctuary through two world wars, and bearing witness to unprecedented shifts in attitudes to musical taste, performance, gender, race, technology, dress code, interpretation and everything else connected with concert-going. Today, the hall is one of the leading venues for new and established artists in Britain

With a stellar cast of characters including Ferrucio Busoni, Arthur Rubinstein, Joseph Joachim, Yvette Guilbert, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Benjamin Britten, not to mention illustrious audiences including Siegfried Sassoon and Virginia Woolf, this is the surprising and enchanting social history of ‘London’s most sumptuous temple of music’.

Praise for Julia Boyd:

‘Utterly absorbing’ The Times

‘Fascinating’ Daily Mail

‘Exceptional' Mail on Sunday

‘Gripping’ Spectator

‘A triumph’ iNews

Julia Boyd is the author of Travellers in the Third Reich: The Rise of Fascism through the Eyes of Everyday People, the Sunday Times top three bestseller and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History 2018. Her previous books include A Dance with the Dragon: The Vanished World of Peking's Foreign Colony, The Excellent Doctor Blackwell: The Life of the First Woman Physician and Hannah Riddell: An Englishwoman in Japan. An experienced researcher, she has scoured archives all over the world to find original material for her books. As the wife of a former diplomat, she lived in Germany from 1977 to 1981. A former trustee of the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, she now lives in London.