Big Red Book

Celebrating television's This Is Your Life

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THIS IS YOUR LIFE - Harriet Cohen, concert pianist, was surprised by Eamonn Andrews outside the BBC Television Theatre, having been brought there by Patricia Foy, producer of the BBC programme Music For You, for what she believed to be a meeting with conductor Eric Robinson.

Harriet, who was born in Brixton, London, to a composer father and a pianist mother, was taught music by her parents and first performed at the prestigious Queen's Hall at the age of 12. She studied piano at the Royal Academy of Music, becoming the youngest-ever scholarship winner at 13.

As an international concert pianist, she won world acclaim as an interpreter of composers such as Bach and Debussy while making it her mission to introduce the work of British composers such as Vaughan Williams and Bax to the world. In May 1948, an accident with a tray of glasses severed the artery in her right hand, restricting her performing career for some years.

programme details...

• Edition No: 85
• Subject No: 85
• Broadcast live: Mon 9 Feb 1959
• Broadcast time: 7.30-8.00pm
• Venue: BBC Television Theatre
• Series: 4
• Edition: 20

on the guest list...

• Mary O'Farrell
• Eva Eckersley
• Margery Corbett Ashby
• Adrienne Spanier
• H E Bates
• Henry Hall
• Isobel Paddock
• Dame Laura Knight
• Rose Cornacchia
• Shura Cherkassky
• Felix Aprahamian
• Albert Batten

production team...

• Researchers: Nigel Ward, Michael Williams
• Writers: Nigel Ward, Michael Williams
• Director: Vere Lorrimer
• Producer: T Leslie Jackson

Classical Life

a symphony of subjects

The Big Red Book

the programme's icon

Photographs of Harriet Cohen This Is Your Life - and a photograph of Harriet Cohen's big red book

The Manchester Guardian 10 February 1959

Television Notes

BBC viewing for the earlier evening

By our Television Critic

The BBC is increasingly bringing some of its better features back to an earlier hour in the evening, and can no longer be accused of pushing them all off into the later period. Its programmes last night, for the first half of the evening, made an interesting pattern. After the ever-fresh and lively Tonight there was the regular This Is Your Life not everybody's favourite but very popular. A minority will always dislike the way in which an unsuspecting person is tricked into appearing, and those who do dislike it would not be won over because last night's subject was Harriet Cohen, the pianist, who after what looked like whole-hearted revulsion settled down to the affair with commendable calm. But I still do not think the soapy style of the tributes in this programme are tolerable when serious artists are dragged before the cameras.