TOP-selling classical Welsh singer Katherine Jenkins OBE will perform in Southampton in the New Year and has released her most personal album ever ahead of Christmas.

The show, An Evening with Katherine Jenkins, is at Mayflower Theatre on May 13.

Katherine, 38, who gave birth to her second child in April, says newly released Guiding Light is "the most intimate album I have ever made" whilst its diverse mix of songs includes a surprising cover of grime artist Stormzy.

The Songs of Praise presenter told the Daily Echo the record was inspired by her life as a mother-of-two, her late father, being a lifelong church-goer and the people she's met while presenting the BBC show.

Apart from her very different version of Stormzy's Blinded By Your Grace - which features her own daughter's voice, it includes The Greatest Showman's Never Enough as well as original songs including Xander's Song - a song written especially for her baby son, Xander, who is almost eight months old.

Katherine said: "It's been four years since the last album and in that time there have been a lot of changes; I've married, had two children and now I'm in a really happy, settled and thankful place, and because I feel so settled and relaxed I didn't want to make an album that's all showy- reaching lots of high notes. I'm not trying to prove anything. It's emotional songs that have touched my heart about loss and love.

"There's a song called Jealous of the Angels. When I first heard it it moved me and I thought about my dad as I never got to say goodbye. That song touched me because of the idea that your loved ones are taken because God needs them as angels."

Loving parenthood she said of her daughter Aaliyah, 3, and son Xander: " I'm obsessed with them and definitely personally it's good to experience having a girl and a boy. They are the best thing that's ever happened to me and it's affected my emotional references and the way I sing.

"But the emotions can become too much when I'm in the recording studio.When I recorded Xander’s Song it took so many attempts. I would burst into tears and had to come back and do it the next day - after going home and giving myself a good talking to!"

Britain’s best-selling classical artist of the last 25 years, Katherine says the album represents the culmination of a deeply emotional journey which began when her father, Selwyn, died and she found a new path when she became a mother. It is an album which speaks of "life, hope, acceptance and a universal spirituality", and she says there is a sense of a greater purpose to her performance.

The Welsh mezzo-soprano added:“I have a life now I don’t think I ever expected to have. I am very happy, very blessed and I feel incredibly grateful. I feel whole new layers of emotion which have really taken me by surprise and made me feel like I have found

myself, found my true voice.”