A WRITER has released a book inspired by her time walking in a county town.

Dancing With Bees is Brigit Strawbridge Howard’s memoir of reconnecting with the natural world and discovering a particular love for bees, from her time living in Malvern.

Mrs Strawbridge Howard, 60, said: “The book starts and ends on the Malvern Hills and it’s about how bees opened my eyes to the wonder of the world.

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“I was walking across the hill to my afternoon job at Greenlink Cafe in Great Malvern, some time in my mid forties, when I suddenly realised I knew more about the French Revolution than the trees I had just walked past.

"Thinking about it, I didn’t know much more about our native wildflowers, bees, or other wildlife either.

"It was a bit of a wake up call.

"At around the same time, the media was full of apocalyptic stories of honeybees in the US leaving their hives and not returning.

"This concerned me at the time from a human food chain perspective, but once I started looking into it, and paying more attention to the bees and other wildlife around me, I switched to being more concerned about the bees themselves.

"I also became aware that this was not all about ‘honeybees’ and that there are, in fact, at least another 20,000 species of bee on the planet.

“I can’t walk past a bee now without wondering what they are up to.”

She wrote the book on and off for about six years but it was not until Chelsea Green offered to publish it that she started writing in earnest.

Now living in North Devon, she travels a great deal, giving talks as a strong advocate for bees.

Mrs Strawbridge Howard added: "Writing the book has been a journey in itself.

The hardback book and audio version will both be published in the UK and in the US on September 6 and she will be doing a talk and book signing at the Malvern Book Co-operative in Great Malvern sometime this autumn.