Catherine Cookson is still top of the pops for North-East readers.

Latest figures on library borrowing in the north shows that more readers borrowed the South Tyneside-born author's books than any other.

That's despite the fact that in the UK overall Cookson came fifth with JK Rowling's Harry Potter and Chamber of Secrets being the most popular book.

The borrowing figures released by the Stockton-based Public Lending Right (PLR) agency showed a marked difference in taste from northern library-goers compared to others across Britain.

Readers between the Humber and Scotland borrowed Catherine Cookson's The Silent Lady ahead of any other book. Second was Josephine Cox's Tomorrow the World followed by three more Cookson titles. Remarkably all of the top ten figures were either Cookson or Cox books.

The overall UK figures showed Josephine Cox's Looking Back in second place, Maeve Binchy's Scarlet Feather in third and JK Rowling's Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in fourth. Cookson then claims the next three spots.

Dr James Parker is in charge of the PLR team. He said: "Our research shows that a majority library-goers in the north region are women aged between about 45 and 60 and it may be that these books, both of which depict life in the industrial centres in times past, reflect their taste."

The PLR remunerates authors for the loan of their work through the public library system. This year authors received an increase from 2.67p to 4.21p for each book borrowed. The most any author can receive is £60,000. A total of 4.5m books were borrowed in 2001, although that figure is thought to be falling.