A photographer from the Gloucestershire Echo helped stop a shoplifter in his tracks after spotting him on the rooftop of a bookshop.

Lensman Mikal Ludlow, (29), saw the thief on the rooftop of Ottakar's bookshop in the Promenade, Cheltenham, opposite the Echo's offices, and dialled 999 fearing that he was about to jump.

But when the man dropped one of the bags full of paperbacks into the road below and ran around to the back of Ottakar's to retrieve it, Mikal ran to tell bookshop staff.

He said: "I ran outside to Post office Lane. When I saw that there were books in the bag I realised they could only have come from Ottakar's.

"I ran round, found the manager and told him they had a man on the roof stealing books.

"We went up to find him but he was no longer there. I looked down to see a police officer looking in the bag with one of my colleagues.

"I was describing what he looked like when I saw him at the end of Post Office Lane.

"I shouted to the police and they ran off and nabbed him."

Police found five paperback books and two greetings card in the thief's haul.

A police spokeswoman said a 27-year-old Cheltenham man was arrested on suspicion of shoplifting. He was given a caution and released.

Hereward Corbett, Ottakar's store manager, said: "He'd been in the store reading psychology books for a couple of hours before but we didn't suspect anything unusual.

"You hope people who read books are too nice to steal. We didn't have a clue until the man from the Echo ran in and told us.

"When we got up there I couldn't see him, so we're very grateful that he spotted him."

The man got onto the roof through a fire door which had been left open to keep customers cool in the hot weather.