Ruth Padel began as a Greek scholar a t Oxford,where she played chamber music as a student and sang in the Schola Cantorum of Oxford. Today she is Professor of Poetry at King’s College London and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She has published twelve poetry collections, most recently Beethoven Variations on the composer’s life and music, which draws on five years’ work with the Endellion String Quartet. Her prose include three books on reading poetry,  a book on wild tiger conservation, a study of rock music and Greek myth, a wildlife novel set in India, and two books on Greek tragedy. She has recently updated The Mara Crossing, her prose-and-poems book on animal and human migration, to include work with Syrian artist Issam Kourbaj on refugees in the Greek island of Lesbos. She was the first Resident writer at Royal Opera House Covent Garden; the first money she ever earned was £5 playing viola in Westminster Abbey.