Its rare to get the opportunity to laze in the sun and read for hours on end.Today I ended up sitting in the back garden in the unexpectedly warm sun, reading and even finishing a book I started last week.The onset of a nasty sore throat led to my being unable to do anything else. Having spent the week flitting from one sort of media to another, it was a pleasure to savour the joys of reading a really good book. Your mind becomes completely involved in the story. The theme, that of discovering the secret of how bees function lent itself to an absorbtion and contentment. The author’s skill in linking the story to the events in France at the time – the French revolution- gave it a context. The narrator’s life story gave it a framework and meaning.

The methodical way in which the narrator carried out scientific experiments, being the eyes of his blind master, resonated with the way the bees went about their work. The massacre of people by gulliotine in the French Revolution had its parallel in the massacre of drones by the worker bees in order to save the hive.

I had never heard of Sara George, the author. before – on googling her I find she has written a diary of Mrs Pepys. which has received mixed reviews.

It was one of those pet Autumn days when it felt wrong to be indoors. It took a sore throat for me to regain a pleasure which I took for granted as a child!