Sting and his tale - He is returning to his home of North Tyneside to face up to his difficult childhood, but will the musician ever find peace? We are inside Durham Cathedral. It's like being inside a great Gothic wedding cake, pale and cold. Sting's voice - deeper, sadder, more robust - soars amid the incense and the notes from fiddles, harps and Northumbrian pipes. He has come to the northeast of England to perform songs from his new winter-themed album, because he equates the season with coming home. "It's a time for coming out of the cold for comfort, for reflection, for dealing with ghosts, perhaps even rebirth," he says. "It's a wonderful coming home for me. I don't come home often..."

''We are inside Durham Cathedral. It's like being inside a great Gothic wedding cake, pale and cold. Sting's voice - deeper, sadder, more robust - soars amid the incense and the notes from fiddles, harps and Northumbrian pipes. He has come to the northeast of England to perform songs from his new winter-themed album, because he equates the season with coming home. "It's a time for coming out of the cold for comfort, for reflection, for dealing with ghosts, perhaps even rebirth," he says. "It's a wonderful coming home for me. I don't come home often.''

It is February 2009, a cold, relentless wind rattles doors and windows as it wraps itself round the old house that sits atop a Tuscan hillside. Surrounded by cypress trees standing against the wintry onslaught, the house has been my home and retreat for the last decade. In the summer, its elevation gives us some respite from the sizzling temperatures in nearby Florence, but in the winter we experience the implacable wind that descends from the North down the peninsula and across the exposed Tuscan hills...

Weaving through all the songs on Sting's latest album "If On A Winter's Night..." are the themes of winter, ghosts and spirits, religion and the pull of home back to loved and missed ones. The musicians and singers complement the songs impeccably - the Northumbrian pipes of Kathryn Tickell are so evocative of the the northeast and are an instant reminder to older fans of his classic 1991 album "The Soul Cages", an album that drew heavily on his roots...

Sting The Traveler: Channeling Schumann for the Royal Opera House and adding lyrics to Bach for his upcoming album, the global rock star shares with Classical TV his ongoing struggle for authenticity, and why the classics bring a tear to his eye. For over 30 years Sting has been the world's scholarly crooner - the voice of a rock star, the soul of a poet. Before he moved to London to form The Police, Mr. Sumner was an English teacher at a convent school. And upon going solo in the mid '80s, Sting pulled from such varied styles, cultural arts and subject matters - jazz, electronica, Algerian folk; songs about prostitutes, songs about Chaucer - he showed us a rocker with a fondness for the arts. But by 2009, what has the sound of Sting become...?