AN author who left Furness to start a new life down under has found himself closer to home than ever before after winning a literary award.

Mark MacLean, originally from Ireleth, has won this year's Zeffirelli's prize at the Lakeland Book of the Year competition for his humorous tale of adolescent memories, Five Boxes.

Mr MacLean left home in 1985 and found himself in Australia, preparing to settle down with his wife and start a family.

He said: "I did come back to Ireleth over the years but it was a kind of accident that saw me having to dig out all those possessions that had been thrown in the loft when I went away.

"I had them shipped to Australia, five boxes of stuff, and going through them took me back to a time and place I’d forgotten about.

"It was these things – records, books, school projects, diaries – that reminded me of the person I’d once been."

The book tells the story of a man replaying his journey to adulthood after stumbling across everyday items stored away from his life in south Cumbria.

His clever portrayal of everyday life in a working-class town charmed judges at this year's Lakeland Book of the Year awards, where Mr MacLean was announced as a winner earlier today at a charity lunch at the Armathwaite Hall Hotel on Bassenthwaite.

This year 50 books were entered and the judges, author and columnist Hunter Davies, broadcaster and writer Eric Robson and BBC News broadcaster Fiona Armstrong, spent the spring months pouring over them.

Mr MacLean said: "It’s fantastic.

"The ultimate validation (for an author) is selling books, and then getting feedback from people who’ve enjoyed it. The next best thing is getting a shortlisting in a competition such as this."

The book invites Furness readers to take a step back in time and re-live their earlier years by sharing in Mr MacLean's common memories.

He said: "There are lots of things about the modern world that are better than those times, but there are things I wish that my kids could do.

"I think of a Thursday when you got your pay, pulled the staple out of the envelope, gave your board to your mam then headed down the pub after Top of the Pops to sit by a roaring coal fire and sing along to Dean Martin and Roger Millar on the jukebox.

"We could never imagine that all that would be swept away."

Throughout it all, Mr MacLean writes with love and affection for his former home.

He said: "Everyone thinks that the place they grew up in is special, but Furness is special. I feel incredibly privileged to have grown up there when I did. I had the shore and the fells and the woods to play in. When I left school there was a job for me in one of the greatest industries for an island nation.

"But the book isn’t a 'good old days' nostalgia-fest. When I talked to friends about these boxes of stuff I found that everyone’s had a similar experience.

"It’s about the things we carry around with us from house to house, or the things that we lose over the years, and the memories that those things have the power to trigger in us."

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