Novelist gets payout over shoe shop fumes

A prize-winning Devon author has won a £115,000 out-of-court settlement over fumes from a nearby shoe shop.

Joan Brady claimed solvents used by the Conker Shoe Company next to her Totnes home caused what she described as "terrifying" physical effects.

Ms Brady, who won the Whitbread Prize in 1993 with The Theory of War, said she was eventually forced to move.



The author claimed that over a three-year period until she moved to Oxford in 2004, she suffered numbness in her feet and legs, sleep disturbance and lethargy.

"I was living with this stuff 24 hours a day. I could stick pins in my legs and not feel them. It was terrifying, I could not use my computer properly," she said.

"I had no choice but to move," she added.