Clemency Burton Hill

Early life and career

The daughter of the television presenter and writer Humphrey Burton and Gillian Hawser, an agent (who had married Robert I Hill in 1970), she attended St Paul's Girls' School and Westminster School before reading English at Magdalene College, Cambridge. Burton-Hill is a former scholar at the Royal College of Music, where she was the recipient of the Hugh Bean Violin Prize.

Acting, music and presenting

Burton-Hill has worked as an actress since 1997 in film and television productions, appearing in Dream Team (1997–98), The Last of the Blonde Bombshells (2000), Midsomer Murders (2004), Supernova (2005), Hustle (2006), and playing the regular role of Sophie Montgomery in Party Animals (2007).

She has toured with Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. In 2005 Burton-Hill co-founded Aurora Orchestra and is a trustee of the Choir of London and a member of its orchestra with whom she regularly tours to the West Bank and Occupied Territories.

In 2008 and 2009, she was a member of the live presenting team at the Proms for BBC Four and BBC Two interviewing Philip Glass and Daniel Barenboim. She has fronted the medical documentary Operation Smile, filmed in Madagascar; presented a film about Frederic Chopin for BBC World as part of their Visionaries series; and in 2009 co-presented, with Huw Edwards, six films about the Leeds International Piano Competition for BBC Four.

In April and May 2010 Burton-Hill presented the BBC Young Musician 2010 programme on BBC Four with the semi-finals and final also shown on BBC Two. She did this again in 2012 and in 2014. The Young Musician event was originally presented by her father.

Burton-Hill was a presenter on BBC Radio 3's classical music weekend breakfast programme and remains a contributor to The Culture Show on BBC Two television. In December 2013, Burton-Hill replaced Sara Mohr-Pietsch as the co-presenter of Radio 3's weekday Breakfast programme. She took an extended break from the morning radio show during her final months of pregnancy although has since returned to the regular presenting rota.

On the Children In Need special edition of the BBC show Only Connect she appeared alongside David Baddiel and Philip Hensher in the "Music Monkeys" team playing against team "Chess Pieces" made up of Bonnie Greer, Hugh Dennis and A.N.Wilson.

Writing career

Her first job in journalism was as a staff fashion writer at Vogue and she has since written for The Economist, The Guardian, The Observer, The Independent, The Sunday Times, The Sunday Telegraph, The Times Literary Supplement, Elle, and The Mail on Sunday. She has also been a columnist at Total Politics and The Liberal magazines and also for The Daily Telegraph and is a freelance contributing editor for The Spectator.

In January 2009 Burton-Hill's first novel, The Other Side of the Stars, was published by Headline Review, a division of Hodder Headline. She then signed a new two-book deal with Headline, and All The Things You Are was published in October 2013.

Private life

Burton-Hill married James Roscoe, Communications Secretary to Queen Elizabeth II, on 18 October 2008. The couple moved to New York where Roscoe was posted as a UN envoy but later moved back to London when the UN posting came to an end.

According to an announcement by BBC Radio 3 on Twitter in March 2014 Burton-Hill gave birth to a baby boy, accompanied by Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier. Colleague Petroc Trelawny also announced the birth, on the Radio 3 Breakfast programme on 10 March.

She is a trustee of Dramatic Need. She appeared on Pointless celebrities in December 2013, getting to the head to head but losing out 2–1, thus not reaching the final round.