Bugs Britannica will be a nationwide chronicle of bug life in the 21st century. It will look at why bugs matter to us and why we care about them. It will record our continuing love-hate relationship with small life and how it influences our life and times, in a word, our culture. We want to find out what meaning we attach to bugs, what uses and entertainments we have made of them, how they inspire us whether in poetry, prose, film or song, and what we do to attract and conserve them.

Bugs Britannica will be the third in a trilogy of books about the relationships between the human and the plant and animal world. It all began with Flora Britannica by Richard Mabey, which explored and recorded the role of wild plants in our lives. This was followed by Birds Britannica, by Mark Cocker and Richard Mabey, which documents the remarkable relationship between our much-loved wild birds and us. Bugs Britannica will chart the links between people and invertebrates in the same lively and engaging way. The authors are Peter Marren and Richard Mabey. And, like Flora.B and Birds B, Bugs Britannica will be published by Chatto & Windus.

We want you to help us. We want to know about your encounters with bug life. Do you garden with bugs in mind, perhaps with bee-friendly flowers or a pond? Are there local names or customs involving particular insects or other invertebrates? Have you ever been inspired by bug activity, whether by a spider spinning its web, or a grasshopper chirping in the long grass, or the homely shape and colours of a bumblebee?

Below are some suggestions about the sort of things we will cover in Bugs Britannica.

It’s a convenient word for an invertebrate, that is, an animal without a backbone. For our purposes a bug is an insect (including, of course, true bugs), but also a spider, crustacean (that is, the likes of prawns, crabs and woodlice), a mollusc such as a garden snail or clam, a jellyfish or a sponge, not to mention the vast variety of worm-kind! We are even interested in microscopic animals like water-fleas and amoeba (but not bacteria or viruses). In other words, Bugs Britannica will chart our relationships with all the animals that occur in Britain except beasts, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish. And that’s around 35,000 species!

Find out more about bugs