The West Country Writers’ Association has announced a new literary award with a prize of £1,000. The John Brooks Award is open to published authors in the UK; the 2013 prize will be for a work of historical non-fiction.

* Subscribe to Country Life and save £1 per issue

Mr Brooks, a former winner of the Guinness Poetry Prize at Cheltenham Literary Festival, wrote Hat (1971) and The Expert (1973). He died in 2010, aged in his nineties, and left a bequest to the association, whose members have included Henry Williamson, Christopher Fry and Daphne du Maurier.

To download an entry form, visit www.westcountrywriters.com

 * Follow Country Life Magazine on Twitter