The Unforgotten Coat shortlisted in Costa Book Awards

[…] On first thought, it’s perhaps rather strange that out of all the creatures on Planet Earth, it is the bee that should be incorporated so seamlessly into a phrase defining what it means to be unstoppably busy. But actually, giving it greater consideration, there is no other creature that is truly busier, more endlessly hardworking and productive – all this as well as being amazingly efficient too; so our furry, buzzing friends most certainly deserve the title. (Fun, fascinating and really rather relevant fact: the simile ‘as busy as a bee’ was derived from Chaucer in The Squire’s Tale: “Lo, suche sleightes and subtilitees/In wommen be; for ay as busy as bees/Be thay us seely men for to desceyve,/And from a soth ever a lie thay weyve.”) Even when our workloads are at their heaviest, they don’t come a fraction close in comparing to that of bees, either in scale of output of importance of impact upon the world; as we rush about with our day-to-day tasks those incredible insects are almost single-handedly saving our environment, yet in an ironic twist the very same environment is rapidly turning against them. Yet through all the adversity that stacks up against them they battle on, providing us much bigger beings with an admirable example of work ethics – as well as more besides. What’s more, literature has long held bees in high regard; their immortalisation certainly didn’t begin and end with Chaucer. Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Rudyard Kipling, W.S Merwin, Ralph Waldo Emerson; all have paid tribute to the small but strong, hardy and humble bee. They’re so influential in the literary world that there’s even been a whole lecture dedicated to bee poetry – almost un-bee-lievable (yes, we’ll stop with the puns now). Adding to the wealth of bee-related material with her latest anthology – entitled The Bees – is Carol Ann Duffy, a work praising and striving to protect, at least in verse, the world of the bee. And as if to show recognition to the subject as much as to the poet, the anthology has been nominated for a Costa Book Award (as has The Unforgotten Coat). […]