A VICARAGE CHANGES HANDS by John Ward, £6.50 ISBN 978-0-948655142

LAKES author John Ward wrote this novel in 1985 but only decided to publish when he reached his 80th birthday.

He was, he says, aided by modern technology which has made it much easier these days to self-publish.

Mr Ward also considered that the novel’s theme - interplaying declining church fortunes with those of a thriving multi-national pharmaceutical conglomerate - was pertinent to this era.

“With the manufacture and control of drugs on an international scale, takeovers and all that - I thought it was topical,” he says.

A Vicarage Changes Hands satirically tells the story of an English country vicarage and the people who lived in it during the 1980s ‘when generations and fortunes are changing rapidly’ and ‘churches are becoming redundant and inherent values lost’.

Available on Amazon and from Merewood Cottage Books, Ecclerigg, Windermere.