Roger Quilliam, of Kendal, recalls working in the Bindery Department at the Westmorland Gazette in the 1970s

The main part of my job was folding sections for the Alfred Wainwright guidebooks, before they were sewn together into volumes. I also prepared small print runs for hotels etc. and other books by the likes of Hunter Davis and local authors Geoffrey Berry and Mary Walsh.

It was interesting to do this, and I got to meet all these people and more, when they came in to see how their books were being made.

Once we had a visit from a chap. Everyone wondered who he was until we learned that he was the (then) Duke of Atholl, who had an interest in the place (I believe he was a major shareholder).

Cameras also visited us from the BBC and ‘Border Lookaround’, when we were instructed to keep on working and try to look extra busy.

In contrast to the high profile of media coverage, we also all had to sign the official secrets act one day, as we got the commission to fold leaflets about submarines being built at Barrow shipyard.

The most specialised work in the department was producing sumptuous one-off publications where gold leaf was pasted into the finished books by hand. This was a highly-skilled and thankless task, which I never took on, although I did apply other gold foil by using a special press.