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|title=The Train in the Night: A Story of Music and Loss

|sort=Train in the Night: A Story of Music and Loss

|publisher=Jonathan Cape

|date=February 2012

|summary=A moving, fascinating memoir of a music lover and journalist suddenly struck down overnight with severe deafness. In the course of treatment and searching vainly for a cure, he analyses why music of all kinds has always been so special for him, and how he has managed to make the best of a major disability.

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Picture the scenario. You have always been passionate about music, with a catholic taste which embraces classical, soul and heavy rock with a bit of everything in between, and your job is that of an arts and music journalist. In your mid-forties you wake up one morning to find your whole world changed overnight by Sudden Neursosensory Hearing Loss. It has a devastating effect on your balance when subjected to any kind of sound, whether it is an aeroplane overhead, the roar of the crowd at a football match, or the music which you once adored with every fibre of your being. Your head is filled with tinnitus, like a very poorly-tuned radio which lacks an off switch.