A BOOK written by the wife of the Bishop of Worcester before she died earlier this year will be launched at a special concert later this month.

Denise Inge was 51 years old when she died on Easter Sunday following a battle against an inoperable sarcoma in her abdomen.

Dr Inge began her book, A Tour of Bones: Facing Fear and Looking for Life, after moving in to her house in Worcester, which is built above a crypt of human skeletons.

Her exploration in to these bones took her to other charnel houses in Europe, and along the way she writes about how facing up to the reality of death can lead to a greater love of life.

Bishop John, who first met Dr Inge when she came to England from America in 1986, said: “It’s often said that death is a taboo in our society and that people just do not want to face up to it or talk about it. In the book, Denise does but, as she herself observes, she discovered that preparing to live and preparing to die are in the end the same thing. My hope is that the book will help people to live well as well as die well.”

The mother to Eleanor, aged 15, and Olivia, nine, had been suffering with abdominal difficulties for a month or so before an MRI scan in May last year revealed the sarcoma.

She began treatment at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, in Birmingham, in the hopes of shrinking the rare form of cancer to make it possible to perform an operation to remove it.

Having grown up in Pennsylvania, USA, the theologian spent her childhood studying nature close to her family home, and that led to her love of gardening.

She was a member of the Quiet Garden Trust, a movement which encourages centres to set aside some time and a place to rest and pray, and regularly inspired gardeners to build their outdoor space.

In 1986, she came to England and met Bishop John, who was then a chemistry teacher at Lancing College, West Sussex.

She went on to become an honorary fellow in early modern research at the University of Worcester and a leading authority on the 17th-century Herefordshire priest and mystic poet Thomas Traherne.

The book launch will take place at the Worcester Festival Choral Society concert on Saturday, November 15 at 7.30pm in Worcester Cathedral, where the concert will be dedicated to her memory.