Bees and Books

Next Friday 14 March I'll be in Keswick for the Words by the Water Festival to talk about my new book The Unexpected Professor which Faber and Faber are publishing on 20 March. It'll be my first time in Keswick and I'm looking forward to it greatly. The book got an enthusiastic review in Saturday's Telegraph by Rupert Christiansen and a slightly sniffy one by Stefan Collini in the Guardian the week before. Bryan Appleyard wrote a profile about me and it in the Sunday Times last week.
The sun shone last weekend and the bees really came alive. They were pouring out of the hives on Sunday and scrambling back in with their pollen sacs crammed with yellow and orange pollen - from crocuses i think and maybe late snowdrops and early flowering shrubs like the Japanese honeysuckle which is full of flower just now in our cottage garden. Good to know all three hives have survived the winter.
Talking of gardening I've just finished reviewing for the Sunday Times a book from Yale University Press called The Gardens of the British Working Class by Margaret Willes. Really wonderful.