Placing the late verse and prose of the poet's Highgate years in the context of his reputation for failure, biographer Richard Holmes brought new lustre to its domestic imagery and subtle diction. This was first-class radio, which made pulling the book from the shelf to find out for yourself seem like a distinctly secondary occupation. Above all, perhaps, the strength of the series lay in its particularity, creating time and place in the mind's eye from a simple study in words. Much of the channel's musical output last week shared this quality of specific occasion, linking music to its actual occurrence as something to be created, discovered and shared. The 10-minute report on the craft of bowmaking that appeared in the interstices of Friday's relay from the Manchester International Cello Festival was a case in point, illustrating a hidden world of activity to complement this marathon event at the Royal Northern College of Music. Booking: 0171-960 4242n The Mystery Plays at the City of London Festival: 4pm/7.30pm Sundays 7 and 14 July, St Bartholomew the Great, Smithfield EC1 Booking: 0171- 638 8891. The week's radio began with Coleridge on Hampstead Heath, listeners being privy to his views on ghosts, mermaids and the species and genera of dreams.

As recorded in one of Keats's letters, the account of a walk with the author of Xanadu was read by Simon Callow in The Unknown Coleridge from Wednesday to Friday on Radio 3. Once you start cancelling, there's no reason ever to stop - there's always something which is not quite right."Does she ever suffer from nerves? "Sometimes, but not over technical things. Memory is the fear, and I play most of my repertoire from memory." Including the Art of Fugue? She laughs "Not likely. It's too good a piece - and too long - to take that sort of risk with."n Joanna MacGregor's new CD, 'Counterpoint: Bach's Art of Fugue, plus Nancarrow's Three Canons for Ursula, and Studies for Player Piano' is released on Monday on Collins 70432. Her live recital of the same programme is at 3.30pm this Sunday at the QEH. I like the idea of going to composers and saying, 'The pupil knows these rhythms, and these notes: what can you create with them?' "She practises eight hours a day, much of it at quarter-speed. "It does you good to let the music enter your body in a profound way, in slow-motion, when so much of life is in fast-forward." And she makes it a point of honour not to be finicky about the conditions in which she has to perform: Glenn Gould, a pianist she venerates, is an awful example of what can otherwise happen.