A BURY Grammar School "old girl" has won a top Australian literary award for a novel set in the heart of her native Lancashire.

Anna Jacobs' The Pride of Lancashire has lifted the prestigious Australian Romantic Book of the Year accolade following a vote by readers. Despite living on the other side of the world, the vast majority of her books are set in Lancashire, a place to which she still feels a very strong connection.

In fact Anna, who lives in Perth, returns to the UK regularly and will be in the United Kingdom in October. She has fond and poignant memories of her education in Bury.

She told the Bury Times: "I owe a lot to Bury - and to Bury Grammar School. I was Anne Sheridan then, a scrawny child with glasses who lived far too much in her imagination and got into trouble for daydreaming.

"Who'd have thought that my daydreaming would one day earn me a good living doing a job I adore?

"I went to school in Bury from the age of 11 to 18, travelling every day from Rochdale. There was quite a community on the school buses and we used to have some fun. Not so much fun one snowy day when the buses stopped running half-way to Rochdale and we all had to walk three miles home in the snow and darkness. I fell through the door at home and burst into tears, exhausted and chilled through."

Anne recalled: "I also remember walking to Bury Parish Church every year on Founder's Day in a long crocodile. We felt so silly with our white gloves and pudding basin hats, and of course, we were trying to make each other laugh, because we were supposed to be suitably solemn.

"I was a Kay Scholar, with all my fees paid. My parents couldn't have afforded to send me to that school. I'm so grateful for that scholarship because I wouldn't have had such an education elsewhere. I'm still friends with two girls I met at BGS, one of whom is also in Australia, while the other still lives in Rochdale."

She continued: "I went to university in Leeds and never lived in Lancashire after I left school. I got married and we lived in various parts of England, then in 1973 we emigrated to Australia with our two children.

"We're still happily married, too. We love it here, but we also love going back to England. We do house swapping - when we can find good ones. It's not easy - and really we'd like to come to England every year. It would be good for my career and for catching up with my family. My parents are 85 and 87 and live near Poulton now.

"And since most of my books are set in Lancashire, I am very well aware of how much I owe to my home county."

Anna began to write seriously after her daughters left home and, to date, she has had 36 novels published. She went on: "Other people of my age are retired or winding their lives down, I'm cranking mine up. Two of my books are listed in the top books borrowed in the UK. I am number 33 in most popular library authors in the UK, ahead of Dick Francis."