an evocative theme for a major book which is to be published in Britain this summer.

Mrs. Ann Davidson, who for the past 10 years or so has spent her winters in Bermuda, will cut short her annual Island visit this year in order to take part in the promotional programmes planned for the launch of her book.

"The Real Paradise'' traces the story of Mrs. Davidson's life as the wife of a colonial administrator in Nyasaland (now Malawi), during the years immediately prior to independence in 1963.

Her love of Bermuda, she says, arose out of the bonds of a deep friendship formed with Hazel and Bobby Lowe, who were also posted to Malawi in the 1950s.

And it is to the Lowes' Salt Kettle Guest House (which, she says, is almost a second home to her), that Mrs. Davidson returns each year.

After an introduction that describes the thorough training offered Mrs.

Davidson and her husband as they entered the service, the major part of the book consists of a unique series of letters written each week over a 13-year period to her mother back in Scotland.

"Apart from a few minor, personal details, I left the letters virtually as I had written them, so they do have an air of immediacy that would be impossible to re-create,'' she says.

The creation of the book began when Mrs. Davidson's sister discovered the letters after their mother's death.

"I had no idea that she had kept them. It took me a whole winter to read them and that gave me the idea of compiling them into book form.'' She says that, originally, it was never meant to be more than a memoir of those days. "I wanted people to know what life was really like in Africa and I also wrote it as a remembrance of a time that has passed into history, for close friends, like Hazel and her family.'' But as the Scottish-born writer became more and more immersed in her task, she realised that her personal story, documenting the twilight days of Empire was different in that it was seen from a woman's point of view. "Although all this took place just before the feminist movement took a hold, I find that the personal adjustments and struggles that I experienced has become inadvertently topical.'' Mrs. Davidson's account of colonial life provides an intimate and vivid account of the daily trials and tribulations of life in a tightly structured hierarchy lived out against the dramatic backdrop of Africa itself.

"It really was the most wonderful place. The administrative capital, Zomba, was reputedly the most beautiful capital in the whole of the Empire.'' Mrs. Davidson joined her husband in the bush, living happily amongst the natives and speaking their language (a branch of bantu) for seven years at a stretch.

"With Africa, you either love it, or hate it,'' she says with a laugh. "I loved it -- the mountains, forests, the colossal plains and rolling savannah and the animals -- lions, elephants, zebra, leopards. And the people were lovely. Very, very friendly. I became close to them because we spent so much time in the bush, sleeping in tents and visiting their villages.

"They were a primitive people and it was a poor colony compared with others in Africa, but I believe they they did a very good job on education through the schools and the churches.'' Since the heady days of independence, when there was so much hope and so many expectations for that great continent, Mrs. Davidson has seen Malawi, under the tenacious presidency of Dr. Hastings Banda, now in his 90s, degenerate into a one-party state. This, combined with an unusually catastrophic period of drought, an influx of huge numbers of refugees from neighbouring war-torn Mozambique, and the systematic cutting down of virgin forest land, has brought hard and hungry times for the once-beautiful land.

Asked why she was never tempted to return to the country which she says formed her as a person, Mrs. Davidson replies: "I'd like to go back, just to physically see the scenery and animals again. But I don't think it is possible for us to go back to a past life and I don't think I could bear to see what has happened to those lovely people.

"Although it's been almost 30 years since I left, I have kept up with events there and still have contacts in Malawi.'' Mrs. Davidson graduated with an honours degree in English from St. Andrew's, Scotland's oldest university, in 1947.

She says she has been pleasantly surprised by the pre-publication interest in her 600-page book, which is to be published by the Pentland Press in June. Its title is taken from a quotation in Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, "The real paradise is the paradise we have lost''.

MRS. ANN DAVIDSON -- Author of a book about pre-independent Africa, she's pictured at the Salt Kettle Guest House which she calls "home from home''.