Lakeland Book of the Year
The Lakeland Book of the Year, also known as the Hunter Davies Lakeland Book of the Year is an award given annually for a book "set in or featuring Cumbria in some way", and is named for the Lake District of north west England. It was founded by writer Hunter Davies in 1984 and is administered by Cumbria Tourism. The judges in 2020, for books published in 2019, were Hunter Davies, Eric Robson and Fiona Armstrong. The prizes are traditionally announced at a gala lunch in June, but in 2020 the proceedings are to take place online because of COVID-19.
There are a number of awards for specific categories of books, and an overall winner is selected as the "Book of the Year". In the 2019 competition, the categories were:
- Fiction
- Guides and Places
- Illustration and Presentation
- Landscape and Tradition
- Literature and Poetry
- People and Business
Winners
| Year | Author | Title | Publisher & ISBN | Notes |
| 1984 joint | AA/OS Guide to the Lake District | AA/OS | ||
| 1984 joint | William Green of Ambleside: Lake District Artist | Abbot Hall Art Gallery | on William Green | |
| 1985 | Fellwalking with Wainwright | Michael Joseph | 18 favourite walks; new ed published 2006 | |
| 1986/87 joint | Lakeland from the Air | Dalesman | with foreword by Alfred Wainwright | |
| 1986/87 joint | Walking with a Camera in Herries' Lakeland | Fountain Press | referring to Hugh Walpole's Herries Chronicles | |
| 1988 | ' | Victor Gollancz | on the poet's wife Sara Fricker | |
| 1989 | Country Diary | Hodder & Stoughton | Wilson wrote for "Country Diary" in The Guardian for 30 years | |
| 1990 | Dream gardens: discovering the gardens of the Lake District | Century | ||
| 1991 | ' | Sutton | editor is a descendant of Lady Anne | |
| 1992 | Coleridge Walks the Fells: A Lakeland Journey Retraced | Ellenbank | retracing Coleridge's 1802 9-day walk | |
| 1993 | Rocky Rambler's Wild Walker | Cicerone | 10 Lake District walks for children | |
| 1994 | ' | Chatto & Windus | a 3rd ed was published in 2015 | |
| 1995 | ' | Sutton | author's great-uncle was Beatrix Potter's husband William Heelis | |
| 1996 | Cumbrian Women Remember: Lake District Life in the Early 1900s | Sutton | ||
| 1997 | ' | Lakeland Press Agency | on Woodrow Wilson's visits to the area: his mother was born in Carlisle | |
| 1998 | Percy Kelly: a Cumbrian Artist | Skiddaw | on Percy Kelly | |
| 1999 | Sam Bough, RSA: the Rivers in Bohemia | Book Guild | on Carlisle-born Sam Bough RSA | |
| 2000 | Sigma Leisure | autobiography | ||
| 2001 | Rex Malden's Whitehaven | Try Malden | photographs by John Malden's father, vicar of Whitehaven | |
| 2002 | Cumbrian Mining | Blue Rock | in 2002 the author ran the Threlkeld Quarry and Mining Museum | |
| 2003 | ' | Cumbria Bird Club | ||
| 2004 | Lakeland life in the 1940s and 1950s : the photographs of Gwen Bertelsman | Halsgrove | Gwen Bertelsman died in 1994 | |
| 2005 | ' | Lake Artists Society | on the | |
| 2006 | ' | Frances Lincoln | on Levens Hall | |
| 2007 | Beatrix Potter: A Life In Nature | Penguin | on Beatrix Potter | |
| 2008 | Gardens of the Lake District | Frances Lincoln | ||
| 2009 | Ivver Sen: Lake District: The Life and Times of the Men and Women Who Work the Land | River Greta Writer | title means "Ever since" in Cumbrian dialect | |
| 2010 | Hercules and the Farmer’s Wife; And Other Stories from a Cumbrian Art Gallery | Aurum Press | by owner of the Castlegate House Art Gallery in Cockermouth | |
| 2011 | Sheila Fell: a Passion for Paint | Lund Humphries | on Sheila Fell | |
| 2012 joint | Dear Mary, Love Percy: A Creative Thread - The Illustrated Letters of Percy Kelly to Mary Burkett 1968-1993 | Skiddaw Press | letters from Percy Kelly to Mary Burkett | |
| 2012 joint | Jack's Yak: A Unique Journey Through Time with the Special Trees of the Lake District and Cumbria and the Remarkable Stories They Have to Tell | River Greta Writer | the title tree is an oak on the Lowther estate | |
| 2013 | ' | Bookcase | when Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens visited in 1857 and wrote The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices | |
| 2014 | Undressed for Dinner | Hayloft | on turning Augill Castle into | |
| 2015 | ' | Allen Lane | on sheep farming in Matterdale | |
| 2016 | Lakeland Waterways: a history of travel along the English Lakes | Lily | Beale is a Windermere Lake Cruises skipper | |
| 2017 | ' | Jonathan Cape | a walk through the Scottish Marches | |
| 2018 | Portrait of Cumbria: Life and Landscape | CN Group | photographs | |
| 2019 | ' | Chitty Mouse Press | on corpse roads | |
| 2020 | The Lake District in 101 Maps and Infographics'' | Jake Island | Announced online 30 June 2020, no gala lunch event, because of COVID-19. "The graphics cover just about everything people want to know or think they know about the Lakes". |