CORNWALL'S answer to the Man Booker Prize, the Holyer an Gof Awards attracted a huge audience to Waterstones, Truro.

A book on a North Cornwall village was the major winner at the awards which are organised and presented annually by Gorseth Kernow in memory of the Cornish publisher and bard Leonard Truran, who died in 1997 and whose bardic name was Holyer an Gof – Follower of An Gof.

Catherine Lorigan's Delabole, the Story of the Slate Quarry and the Making of its Village Community, published by Pengelly Press, was the star of the show for books published in 2007.

Not only was it the winner for the study of locality, village, town or parish, it also took the overall Holyer an Gof major award.

The awards attracted a record entry of 78 titles which were read by 20 readers and judges, most of them bards of Gorseth Kernow, plus 10 schoolchildren who helped with the children's award.

Other winners included: Cornish Language, Bewnans Ke, edited by Graham Thomas and Nicholas Williams, published by the University of Exeter Press. Children's Books: The Bower Bird by Ann Kelley, published by Luath Press, which was also awarded the Cornish Literary Guild's Literary Salver, presented to the author on the night by the guild's president, novelist E V Thompson.

A Visitor to Cornwall, by Jo Mattingly and Stephen Tyrell, published by Pasticcio, took the award for illustrations, paintings and reproductions.

Adult fiction was won by True Colours, by Mike Sagar Fenton, published by Truran. Adult poetry and drama: Violets unfold in my Throat, by John Gordon, published by Hypatia Trust. All other non-fiction: The Making of Moonta, by Philip Payton.

Commendations in their various classes went to Pan Dheuth an Glaw, by Tony Snell, published by Kesva an Taves Kernewek, highly commended; A Slice of Treneere, compiled by a number of young writers and published by Trelya; Penwith Moods and Wild about Cornwall, both by David Chapman, and published by Alison Hodge; Jane Tozer's Knights of Love, published by Fal.

Susan Hoyle's The Church of St Levan, published by the Hypatia Trust: Chris Vick's Storm of the Magi published by Truran; The Islanders, by John Trelawny, published by Beavers Press; Electric Pastyland, by Alan Kent, published by Halsgrove; Cornwall Cree Nation by Alan Davis, published by Johnston Hope; Brian French's Wreck and Rescue

round Padstow's Doom Bar published by Lodenek Press; Once aboard a Cornish Lugger by Paul Greenwood, published by Polperro Heritage Press; The Isles of Scilly by Rosemary Parslow, published by Collins; The Banners of the Old Cornwall Societies by David Stark, published by the FOCS; Nicholas Orme's Cornwall and the Cross, published by Phillimore & Co, and A Strange Unquenchable Race, Cornwall and the Cornish in Quotations, compiled by Derek Williams and published by Truran.

Sponsors the Eden Project gave each of the winners a cheque for £50 to pass on to a charity of their choice.

It was staged and sponsored by Ottakars, now Waterstones, in Truro, which chose a Cornish best seller for its award – Shadows in the Sky, by Pete Cross, published by Studio Cactus.

Edited by Peter W Thomas and Derek R Williams, Setting Cornwall on its feet: Robert Morton Nance 1873-1959, published by Francis Boutle, received a special overall commendation.