Bruce told us: ‘I started to write this book about five years ago now, as I was about to retire from Liberty Wines. One of my daughters suggested I write down my tales when I was growing up in the Merseyside of the 1960s. I was a bit of an upstart even then. I’d had TB and during the six-month convalescence, I became a birder. On good days, I would be pushed out on my bed onto a verandah in the middle of a wood. A passion for nature stayed with me for the rest of my life. I started to scribble some notes and ideas and before long I had a 70,000-word manuscript. It was battered into shape by my mentor for almost two years, Cynan Jones. Cynan was once a wine customer of mine and is a good friend of Liberty Wines managing director, Tom Platt. He is now a very successful author published by Granta. He was top of the US fiction charts when Obama’s autobiography was top of the non-fiction charts. I owe Cynan a lot. The book describes my early birding days from the age of ten until I was 17. I revisit those places as an old man, a good 50 years later. A collection of reflections through the lens of old age to add to the narrative of those earlier days. The world of nature is at the heart of this book. What does it mean to be part of nature, how did it start, how do we go forward? Hopefully it is a rallying cry for those who care about the world beyond their front door.’
An Eye for Birds is full colour and contains 40 of Bruce’s photographs. Copies can be purchased via Bruce’s publisher (www.whittlespublishing.com) or ordered through your local bookshop.