The Story of Waverton Good Read
An article by Susannah Hickling about Le Prix De La Cadière was the starting point for the Waverton Good Read Award in 2003. Francois Dufour, the doctor of La Cadière D'Azur, (a Provencal village - population about 4000) had speculated that 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. The idea was a great success and Le Prix De La Cadière was born.
Wendy Smedley and Gwen Goodhew decided to try to replicate this idea in Waverton, a village of 2000 outside Chester. They set out to find fifty or more debut novels - first adult novels written by British citizens and published in the previous twelve months. 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, although publishers became more and more helpful as they realised what was going on. Even more remarkably, more than 50 people from in and around the village were recruited to read and review the novels.
