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RUTH climbed the narrow path to Windlow Hill. She had a canvas bag in one hand and her mother’s old cardigan tucked under the other. Below, the village looked almost as it had in her childhood – white

For 25 years Farrah Storr sought answers to a heartbreaking rejection at 17. When she eventually found them, she realised she’d been looking in the wrong places all along

Each month, a reader writes to a loved one in the afterlife and Mandy Masters tunes in to share their reply. This time, Julie Morris writes to her mum Marjorie

© HEADER DRAWINGS BY MICHAEL HADDAD/HEART Leaves Byung-Chul ...

In 1976, the revolutionary singer-songwriter LAURA NYRO returned from self-imposed exile. But her comeback confounded expectations, shifting away from the impassioned intimacies of her early albums to embrace more radical perspectives. Fifty years on, Nyro’s collaborators revisit her striking second act. “She was a hip American from the Bronx,” one friend and producer tells Rob Hughes. “But her soul was old.”

Works by Saariaho and Shostakovich Dudok Quartet Amsterdam Rubicon RCD1218 59:41 mins Carrying a dedication to ‘those who have departed’, Kaija Saariaho’s Terra Memoria for string quartet, composed in