A BOOKER Prize-winning novelist was among those who braved burning embers to raise money for charity.

Pat Barker, 66, and her daughter, Anna Ralph, 35, were among a crowd of about 30 who walked barefoot across 20ft of embers in Durham Market Place,to raise more than £4,000 for the city’s St Cuthbert’s Hospice.

The pair took in the challenge in memory of Mrs Barker’s late husband, David, a former emeritus professor of zoology at Durham University, who died in January.

Mrs Barker, who won the 1995 Booker Prize for The Ghost Road, said: “I was a little scared when I was in the queue waiting to do the firewalk but it was amazing.”