A BOOK inspired by MP Rory Stewart's 600-mile walk along the English/Scottish border has triumphed at the Lakeland Book of the Year Awards 2017.

The Marches chronicles the 30-day trek undertaken by the Penrith and The Border MP, during which his 90-year-old father, Brian - a former British colonial official and intelligence officer - regularly ambushes him by car. Together the pair reflect on their lives and the landscapes they have encountered.

Awards founder and writer Hunter Davies said: "I thought at first Rory's book was about the French political party, but blow me, it is all about our native heath, plus his dad, and is one of the most original books we have had in 33 years of the prize."

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Winners were revealed at a literary luncheon at Armathwaite Hall on Bassenthwaite Lake. Three judges - Hunter and broadcasters Eric Robson and Fiona Armstrong - spent three months reading the 68 entries.

They said their decisions were made "especially difficult" by the number of well-known and accomplished authors among the entries, including poet Helen Farish, Marie-Elsa Bragg, daughter of Lord Bragg, and Hunter's late wife, Margaret Forster. Despite being one of Cumbria’s foremost and acclaimed writers, her close relationship to Hunter meant she had never entered a book into the awards. However, on this occasion, her final novel, How to Measure a Cow, was entered by her publishers.

Hunter did not take part in judging it, leaving his fellow judges to declare it the winner of the Bookends prize for art and literature. Fiona Armstrong described it as "another triumph from Margaret Forster. She makes the simple intriguing and the ordinary extraordinary”.

Category prize winners were:

- Striding Edge Productions prize for guides and places: The Lakeland Dales by Robert Gamble

- Latitude Press prize for illustration and presentation: Nowt but a Fleein’ Thing” by Al Phizacklea and Mike Cocker

- Zeffirellis prize for people and business: Donald Campbell – An Odyssey in Speed by David de Lara

- Bookends prize for arts and literature: How to Measure a Cow by Margaret Forster

- Bill Rollinson Prize for landscape and tradition: The Marches by Rory Stewart.

Paper maker James Cropper plc, of Burneside, sponsored the awards. The partnership has been described as "particularly appropriate, as virtually all hard-backed books published in the UK are bound using paper produced by James Cropper in Cumbria".