I am passionate about Beethoven, and have been for as long as I can remember. I have always believed him to be the greatest composer of them all - and judging by letters I have received from readers of my books, I am far from alone.

Why Beethoven? Of all the questions I am asked - both by readers of my books and members of the audience at my Beethoven talks - this is the most common. And the easiest to answer. It's the music, of course! Surely the most profoundly inspiring music ever written.

Beethoven came into my life more years ago than I can remember, seeping slowly into my consciousness, bedding himself down, until he became an indispensable part of my life. As I suspect he is of yours.

Let me take you back to the beginning. I am a failed musician! At school I was a goodish pianist - good enough to play hymns at evening assembly - and a capable violinist - good enough to play in the school orchestra. Then I discovered jazz, taught myself the trombone, founded the school's first jazz band (to the fury of the Music Director, who punished me for my troubles), won the school individual instrument competition on the trombone (to the disgust of my violin teacher) ..... and decided to turn professional.

But wiser voices prevailed - to the eternal relief of the music industry, I'm sure, as well as my bank manager. If I'd tried to earn my living as a musician, I'd have ended up sleeping on the streets. How I envy those who can, though! So now I write about music; it's the closest I can get to playing it.

As a news junkie with a penchant for foreign languages, I became a journalist, first with Reuters news agency - I was based in Paris, and in 1968 covered the student riots and the subsequent downfall of President de Gaulle - then with BBC TV News. Television had always fascinated me. I found the immediacy of it irresistible, and the fact that you could actually see events unfolding in front of you and show them to the viewer made it the kind of journalism I wanted to do.

And so I joined the BBC as a news writer with the single aim of becoming a TV reporter. They said no; writers are writers, reporters are reporters. After 18 months I joined the rival organisation - ITN - independent, lively, less rigid - and told them I wanted to be a reporter. They said no too.

Three years later they said yes, and my dream came true. I was a TV news reporter. For 10 years I travelled Britain and the world. I covered riots and revolutions. I interviewed prime ministers and presidents, sportsmen, rock stars and murderers on death row. I stayed in some of the world's finest hotels and other times slept rough. I travelled on Concorde, executive jets, light aircraft and helicopters. In Hollywood I covered the Oscars; in Afghanistan I was put up against a wall with my camera crew by Soviet soldiers and we thought we were in front of a firing squad.

A TV news reporter goes to places you can only dream of - and to other places where you wouldn't go if they paid you. And everywhere I went, in my pocket there was always a Walkman and some Beethoven tapes. After a day in which you might have seen sights you want to forget, when you despair of how cruel man can sometimes be to man, the Eroica Symphony blown into your head at full volume somehow puts the world back to rights and restores your faith in humanity

When, after 10 years, ITN said now we want to make you a newscaster, I resisted - for two minutes. It was the logical next step. As a newscaster, my life was just as exciting, but in a different way. For more than 15 years I anchored every ITN bulletin. And every time I heard the voice in my ear counting down...."Five, four, three, two, one....On air!" I got the familiar flutter in the stomach, the adrenalin rush to which I was addicted. It is as exciting as being "on the road", without the bullets flying.

Becoming a news anchorman gave me one benefit I had not foreseen. The regular schedule - something I had never known as a journalist - gave me the time to turn to a project that had seeded itself in my brain. I remember precisely where it started: at a Beethoven concert in Washington in 1983 - Egmont overture, Piano Concerto No 3, Symphony No 7.

Afterwards, the music still ringing in our ears, my wife Bonnie and I went to a bookshop in Georgetown and I bought a biography of Beethoven. What a life! I had no idea. All I knew, like most people, was that he was the one who went deaf. What I was unprepared for was the rivalry, jealousy, intrigue, love, turmoil, war, disasters, triumphs, passion, anger, pain, and ultimately glory that surrounded his life.

"I want to write the story of his life," I said to Bonnie.

"Do it," she said.

Seven years later I began. Nearly 10 years after that I finished. But it's never really finished. there are more books. There are my talks. There is my website. And, of course, there is always the music.

© John Suchet