TWO friends from a Chester village didn’t expect much when they launched their own book award but eight years on the Waverton Good Read is now considered to be among Britain’s most prestigious literary prizes.

This year’s top five shortlist has just been announced and the readers of Waverton are now trying to decide who should win their coveted award.

The Waverton Good Read Award was started by friends Gwen Goodhew and Wendy Smedley in 2003.

The pair were inspired by an article written about Le Prix De La Cadière a book award in France. Francois Dufour, the doctor of La Cadière D'Azur, a provincial village in France had speculated reading a good book might be as useful to some of his patients as the medication he would normally prescribe.

So he set up an annual prize for the French debut novel of the year, which attracted most votes from the readers in the village.

Wendy and Gwen decided to try to replicate this idea in Waverton. They set out to find 50 or more debut novels, written by British citizens and published in the past 12 months.

Gwen said: “We first just went to the book shop and tried to pick out all the debut novels. Of course this didn’t work so we invested in the Writers Handbook which gave us a list of all the publishers and we wrote to them.

“The aim was not only to stimulate reading in the village but also to provide encouragement to British writers. It took some persistence to identify and then gather several copies of each book, but publishers became more and more helpful as they realised what was going on.”

Wendy and Gwen said they were concerned they would not find the people in the village to read the books outside their own friendship group. But in that first year they managed to recruit 50 people from in and around the village to read the books.

Wendy said: “ We would walk into the post office and hear people talking about the books they had read, what they liked and what they didn’t like. It was fantastic.”

Gwen said: “It was good that in the first year we had such a popular book win, Mark Haddon’s The curious incident of the dog in the night time. It proved that our readers knew what they were talking about.”

From that year on the number of readers boomed, they even have had small groups of readers outside the village in Bickerton and even in Styal Prison.

Gwen said: “All we ask is that the readers have some connection with Waverton.”

Wendy added: “Many of our winners have done really well, most have had their work turned into films.”

The award only looks at debut novels written for adults. In the September of each year the Waverton Good Read releases the list of 60 books nominated for the award, in the January they cut it down to 20 and in the March they shortlist the top five.

Boxes of books are placed around the village in the post office, hairdressers, village hall and church for people to sign out and read. Every person who takes out a book must then complete a review sheet, which rates the book. Wendy and Gwen invite a variety of the authors to come and give talks at the village hall.

The winner is announced at the Waverton Carnival, this year is on July 3. In October the winning author is invited to a celebratory prize giving dinner at Eaton Golf Club.

Gwen said: “We have been thrilled with how it has taken off, and instead of dying out as we thought it might. It has grown and more people are getting involved.

“We are actually being contacted by book awards around the world to find out how we do things in the Waverton Good Read.”