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In the winter of 1982, the jazz pianist and composer Thelonious Monk died at the age of only 64.

He'd spent his final years in a bed wearing a suit in a house full of cats in New Jersey.

Looking out across the Hudson, he could see the skyline of Manhattan, the place where he grew up, performed and wrote.

He didn't write, abide with me, of course that was another monk, but he put together this

rather wonderful arrangement, a reminder of the very beginning of his career

when he toured Depression-era America with a traveling evangelist.

Monks only Monk's own writing includes 70 of the best and best known compositions in modern jazz. That cat infested house in New Jersey where monk lived at the end of his life was owned by his friend and patron Nika, the so-called Jazz Baroness and the great

aunt of my guest Hannah Rothschild.

Hannah is a writer, filmmaker and the newly appointed chair of the National Gallery.

Did you know your aunt?

I did. I went to meet her when I was when I first got the opportunity to go to New York in the 80s and I rang her up cold

because I'd heard about her and I was very intrigued by her so I got her number from my grandfather and I rang her up and I said oh hello I'm your great niece and there was an incredible pause and then she went wild

not what you expect your great aunt to say. And she then tried to educate me about jazz.

And I have to say, I was a very, very slow learner.

She would send these albums backwards and forwards across the Atlantic trying to get me to get it,

you know dig it, be one of the cats, you know all that kind of vernacular that goes with jazz.

Which I still not very good at by the way.

Hannah, why have you chosen Thelonious Monk as your great life?

I admire many people but there's something particularly impressive and touching about this

man, Phologious Monk, who was born in 1917 in the deep south of America and had to cope with

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