DURING more than 40 years of researching, lecturing and writing about local history, Pamela Hurle has examined and brought to light many interesting and neglected aspects of Malvern’s past and she continues this tradition with her latest book, which is her 15th.

Previous titles include works such as Bygone Malvern; Upton: portrait of a Severnside town; Beneath the Malvern Hills: a history of the village of Welland and Malvern Girls’ College: a centenary history.

The author’s new book is Malvern Women of Note which she describes as the first book to look specifically at the considerable contribution made by women to the social, economic and cultural life of Malvern and, in some cases, much further afield.

The book looks at aristocratic women, such as Lady Lyttelton, Lady Foley and Lady Howard de Walden, who had a marked influence on Malvern’s development and whose names still survive in buildings and paths.

But Mrs Hurle, of Storridge, near Malvern, also looks at women of less exalted status who played their part in the town’s history such as the keepers of shops and boarding houses and the women who tended the donkeys which took early visitors up and down the hills.

The pioneering teachers who founded schools such as the Abbey, St James’s, the Lawnside and Malvern Girls’ College are also recognised.

Malvern has long been associated with the arts and culture and has links to the writer Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the painter Dame Laura Knight and singer Jenny Lind – who was known as the Swedish Nightingale – who ended her days at Wynds Point, near British Camp, and is buried in the town’s cemetery.

The book is available from publisher Aspect Design, Newtown Road, and is also available from Malvern’s tourist information centre, Great Malvern Priory, the Malvern Book Cooperative, from Ledbury Books and Maps and the Upton Map Shop.