Cuddy: Winner of the 2023 Goldsmiths Prize

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The triumphant new novel from the Walter Scott Prize-winning author of The Gallows Pole and The Offing. A visionary epic which covers a millennium of English history and employs poetry and prose, playscript and pastiche to trace the story of St Cuthbert, the building of Durham Cathedral and the contemporary northern landscape. There’s also a brief interlude which recounts the desperate experiences of Scottish soldiers imprisoned in the cathedral after the battle of Montrose in 1650.

Myers characterisation is excellent and the stories overlap, interlink and echo off each other through the years. Because of this, it feels like four disparate stories that have been cut and paste next to each other, rather than like four stories working together as one. It's about centuries ticking past and how stories are told and passed down, how mystical the human experience really is. There is a continuum which Myers weaves through an ancient folklore which challenges the powerful and defends the vulnerable. Myers reworks these stories to give us a masterpiece deserving of a place on this year’s Booker Prize longlist.Following the Battle of Dunbar three thousand Scotsmen were imprisoned in the Cathedral, 1700 of them died.

Highly recommended for historical fiction fans, those who love Myers' work or simply readers who love a great story. The second part is about the building of the cathedral, where a rather nasty incident takes place – although it’s structured like a classic medieval text with huge blocks of text. Book three, The Corpse in the Cathedral, finds us in the company of a 19th-century Oxford professor, Forbes Fawcett-Black, invited to witness the opening of Cuthbert’s tomb.

It is probably Myers' most ambitious and experimental book (with the possible exception of The Gallows Pole) and it is a very enjoyable and stimulating read. It is not until 2013, when a new café is being constructed, that their mass grave will be discovered. The novel is divided into four "books", each of which follows a different character in a different century, but all characters have a connection with St. The book is told in single stories that make a whole - each section has a different format and style, and different characters. But, they are of course linked by a shared sense of place and a history which ultimately binds them together, if not as seamlessly as one might expect.

I bought this on a whim after having visited Lindisfarne, Cuddy’s Cave, and Durham for the first time this year and it was so fun to explore the story of Cuthbert through the ages.The symbiosis of poetry and story, of knowledge and deep love, marks out Cuddy as a singular and significant achievement. Myers weaves recurring symbols and images throughout his stories and the overall effect is of the unifying influence of myth, story and shared experiences across the ages, and in particular, the long, beneficent influence of the the Saxon saint at the centre of this remarkable story. It is mostly at the fictional end of the historical fiction spectrum, and although St Cuthbert or Cuddy is, along with Durham Cathedral, the main link between its parts, he remains a peripheral and elusive figure who mostly appears in the other protagonists' dreams and vision. It is accepted by you that Daunt Books has no control over additional charges in relation to customs clearance.