An affinity with Nature

FOR Rachel Pedder-Smith, a fascination with tiny, deceased objects began at a young age. By the time she was nine, she had accumulated several collections of dried insects, scouring the fields close to her home in rural Suffolk for dead bodies, which she took home and pinned to polystyrene in neat, annotated rows. She collected butterflies and hornets, but bees were by far her favourite. ‘I was transfixed by bees, by their being so colourful and both furry and shiny, which to a child was fascinating,’ she remembers.

I was transfixed by bees, by their being