LEGENDARY author, playwright and broadcaster Alan Bennett presented Bream Community Library with the first ever David Vaisey Prize of £5,000.

Bream fought of competition from 20 entries from Gloucestershire’s 39 libraries in the competition which encourages more people to use their public library.

Bream Library was originally shortlisted for its imaginative initiative to increase the number of children to visit the library.

It runs a regular LEGO club where children build LEGO projects and gain inspiration from LEGO books which they read with their parents.

The other three finalists were Longlevens, Brockworth and Tuffley and Matson which picked up £1,000 each.

Bream Library volunteer James Robertson, 17, stepped forward to take the £5,000 prize from Mr Bennett at a presentation as part of the Cheltenham Literature Festival.

James, who started volunteering at the community library last year, said: “To win this award is massive. Everybody at the library is enormously proud of all the effort that every volunteer has put in.”

And the playwright shared his belief that libraries are a vital community service and should be publicly funded.

He said: “Libraries like hospitals like public transport, should come out the rates. They are, or should be, a community service.

“The best moments in reading are when you come across something... a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things... which you had thought special and particular to you.

“Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have not met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.

“In the multiplication of such moments libraries and librarians are indispensable and the David Vaisey Prize celebrates that.”

The award for Gloucestershire libraries was launched in honour of David Vaisey CBE, a Gloucestershire man who dedicated his life to libraries, becoming head of the Bodleian Library at Oxford University and Keeper of the Archives there.

Mr Vaisey and Mr Bennett, who have been friends for more than 50 years, first met at Exeter College, Oxford.

“We were both of us on a full grant which, though not munificent, was adequate,” said Mr Bennett. “One notion that we have lost in David’s and my lifetime is of the state as nurturer.

“For both of us the state was a saviour delivering us out of poverty and putting us on the road to a better life.”

The David Vaisey Prize encourages readers of all ages to borrow more books, read and discuss titles, as well as sparking community support and help from volunteers.