Play it Again

As editor of the "Guardian", Alan Rusbridger's life is dictated by the demands of the 24-hour news cycle. It is not the kind of job that leaves much time for hobbies. But in the summer of 2010, he managed to make his annual escape to a 'piano camp'. Here, inspired by another amateur's rendition, he set himself an almost impossible task: to learn, in the space of a year, Chopin's Ballade No.1, a piece with passages that demand outstanding feats of dexterity, control, memory and power - a piece that inspires dread in many professional pianists. His timing could have been better. The next twelve months were to witness the Arab Spring, the Japanese tsunami and the English riots, and were bookended by the "Guardian" breaking two remarkable news stories: WikiLeaks and the "News of the World" hacking scandal. It was a defining year in the life of the "Guardian" and its editor, and one of the most memorable in the history of British journalism.