AN EAST Dorset wordsmith has written her first novel at the age of 76.

Grandmother Rosemary Allen, of Corfe Mullen, has taken seven years to pen romance Listening to Brahms, which has now been self-published.

But the book has been almost 60 years in the making after Rosemary was inspired as a teenage girl writing a diary on a school trip to Germany.

The former teacher, who worked at Bournemouth and Poole College as an English and media studies tutor, said: “The seeds of the book were sown a long time ago.

“I have a diary that I kept when I was on a German exchange as a 17-year-old pupil in 1954, and I heard a Brahms Rhapsody No 2 being played on a piano. I still have the photographs I took and the diary I kept at that time. I wanted to use them to write a fictional story emphasising the ability of music and photographs to recall memories and emotions.”

The book flits between 1989 and 1954, as main character Margaret discovers the diary she wrote as a teenage girl on an exchange trip to Volkmarshausen, West Germany, amongst her late mother’s belongings.

Rosemary, a member of the Bournemouth Symphony Chorus, said: “It’s my first novel, but I have written short stories before, one of which was broadcast on Radio 4’s Morning Story in 1987.

“It has taken me some time to write it, as I waited until after I had retired. Some people are able to sit at the kitchen table surrounded by their families and write, but I needed a bit more space and time to finish the story.”

Wimborne bookshop Gullivers is now stocking the book.

“It’s really wonderful, as Gullivers is one of the reasons I decided to live in this area,” Rosemary said.

“I walked in one day some years ago, and thought, ‘This is just lovely – I could live here’.”

For more information, visit rosemaryallen.co.uk