AUTHOR and journalist Bee Rowlatt, who grew up in York, will be returning to the city to promote her new book Talking About Jane Austen In Baghdad.

The factual book charts the unlikely friendship that sprung up between Bee and an Iraqi woman, May Witwit, after they spoke on the phone and then exchanged emails.

There was no reason why Bee and May should ever have met, let alone become friends whose email correspondence ended up in a Penguin paperback.

At the time of their first encounter, Bee, who attended Haxby Road Primary School, Huntington School and then The Mount School, was a journalist working for the BBC World Service and a mother of two young children, with another on the way.

May was living 2,500 miles away in troubled and war-torn Iraq.

The differences between the two women were great.

Bee, now 38, was wrapped up in her professional and domestic life, while May was fearing for her very existence in Iraq, while also having to endure the hostility aroused by her marriage to a younger man, a union considered unsuitable by their families.

Bee, who was featured in The Press in February, will be signing copies of her book at Waterstone’s in York, on Wednesday, at 6.30pm.

WIN THE BOOK...

Talking About Jane Austen In Baghdad is published by Penguin, at £8.99. We have four copies to be won. For a chance to win, answer the following question: Who was Bee Rowlatt working for when she first met her Iraqi friend May Witwit?

Answers to Talking About Jane Austen Competition, Features, The Press, 76-86 Walmgate, York YO1 9YN.