CUMBRIA’S literary set gathered at the Old England Hotel in Bowness on Tuesday to hear the winners of the 25th Lakeland Book of the Year awards.

Authors from across the county were in the running for prizes across five different book categories, and there was a surprise winner in the special Best Cumbrian Book Ever award.

Competition co-founder, Hunter Davies, presented the overall winners award to Keswick-based former journalist and Cumbria Life Editor, Keith Richardson, for his collection of interviews with dyed-in-the-wool Lakeland characters - Ivver Sen: Lake District: The Life and Times of the Men and Women Who Work the Land.

Ivver Sen, which is Cumberland dialect for ‘ever since’ featured pastel drawings of the personalities and landscapes by award-winning artist Keith Bowen, as well as images from acclaimed Lake District landscape photographer, Val Corbett.

The book, which also won the people and business category, features interviews with long-standing characters like Wasdale-based champion fell-runner Joss Naylor, who ran 70 peaks in a single day at the ripe old age of 70.

As part of the competition’s 25th anniversary, members of the public voted for the Best Cumbrian Book Ever in an online poll on Cumbria Tourism’s www.golakes.co.uk website.

From among the likes William Wordsworth, Arthur Ransome and Alfred Wainwright, Catherine Cannon, of Great Strickland scooped the prize for children’s book, Felix The Fast Tractor and The Coal Delivery.

Part of a set of book based on a Cumbrian farm, it tells the tale of Felix and his friends Colin The Combine Harvester and Tippy the Tipper.

The Bill Rollinson Prize for Landscape & Tradition winner was A Guide to the Stone Circles of Cumbria by Robert W.E Farrah.

The Bookends Prize for Arts & Literature winner was Inside Story Selected Poems by William Scammell (dec’d) by Christopher Pilling.

The David Winkworth Prize for Illustrated and Presentation winner was Capturing the Mountains: The Lake District through the lens of the Abraham Brothers by Susan Steinberg.

The Michael Berry Prize for Guides, Walks and Places winner was Another Country: A Guide to the Children’s Books of the Lake District and Cumbria by James Mackenzie.