A BOOK borrowed from Malvern Library has finally been returned... 49 years late.

The Card, by Arnold Bennett, was borrowed in 1968 and should have been returned on January 3, 1969.

A woman brought the book in to the library. It had been borrowed by her husband but had somehow made its way into his own book collection, where it remained hidden away until this week.

The Card is a comic novel written in 1911. It was made into a film in 1952 starring Alex Guinness and Petula Clark.

The library currently charges 17p a day for overdue books, not counting Sundays and Bank Holidays, when the library is closed. If a fine had been levied, it would have been approximately £2,500.

Arnold Bennett, who was born in 1867 and died in 1931, write numerous novels. His four Clayhanger novels became a popular TV series in the mid-1970s.

Last year, our sister paper the Hereford Times reported that a copy of The Microscope and its Revelations by Dr William B Carpenter, borrowed from the library of Hereford Cathedral School in 1886, was returned by the Alice Gillett, the borrower’s granddaughter. The fine would have been £7,446.

But the record belongs to former prime minister Robert Walpole, who in 1668 borrowed a German biography of the Archbishop of Bremen from the library of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, which was not returned until 1956, after 288 years. Cllr Lucy Hodgson of Worcestershire County Council, which runs the library service, said: “This is something that happens occasionally so I’m sure it was a pleasant surprise for the library staff. There is such a wide range of books at Malvern Library.”