From Coiners to Cathedrals

In the heart of Calder Valley, once close to the home of the leader of the Cragg Vale Coiners, the local fish and chip van is rammed. Surrounded by vans and trailers, Mytholmroyd locals look on from outside the small community centre as a production crew mill around after a long day filming on the surrounding moors.

The crew is hard at work adapting Benjamin Myers award-winning novel The Gallows Pole. Myers is an English author, journalist, and poet. He was born in 1976 and raised in County Durham, England. He has published several novels and books of poetry, including Richard, The Book of F*ck, and The Gallows Pole, which won the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction in 2018.

The Gallows Pole encapsulates the rugged landscapes of Calderdale while taking the reader along in the resistance of David Hartley and his motley band of forgers as they seek to survive in the poverty of late 18th century Calderdale.

The BBC drama is due to hit our screens later this year and Benjamin Myers is “Quietly confident, to use a cliché.

“Shane Meadows has done a fantastic job, and he takes the story somewhere else entirely. He has also assembled a cast of actors that somehow combines experience with many first-time actors too. Michael Socha as the lead is particularly good, and I think he will come to be regarded as one of the very best of his generation. The entire series is unlike anything that has ever been made for the BBC.”

Fittingly it was economics that brought the writer to the area and led to the creation of the novel. “I lived in London for 12 years but back in 2009 found it no longer possible to stay there on the meagre income of a freelance writer; I was priced out. It’s not a place in which you can live well on a low income. So I moved to Calderdale having previously visited the area for the sum total of one hour. It was quite a random decision. I like the close proximity to woods, moors, fields; I have even grown to appreciate the endless rain.”

His latest novel however returns to the writer’s hometown of Durham. Due to be published on the 16th March, Benjamin Myers Cuddy will be out in stores to be devoured. Quite a departure from the gritty gang story of The Gallows Pole and the tender love story of The Offing, Cuddy is inspired by the legend of St Cuthbert, often considered the unofficial Saint of the North of England.

“In some ways Cuddy’s more ‘spiritual’ – whatever that means – than anything I have written before, but also it is hopefully funnier too,” Benjamin explains. “It feels like a culmination of everything I have been working on for the past two decades. Even just to complete the project is a victory of sorts, not least because a global pandemic occurred halfway through my early research and wanderings.”

Set in the medieval city of Durham, where the writer grew up, the book spans centuries, following the stories of wandering pilgrims, stonemasons and zero-hour contract workers, with St Cuthbert casting an ever-present shadow.

“I think perhaps it is a literary attempt at time travel, a mental mapping of those lives rarely covered in novels – humble people in the northeast of England.”

Cuddy took Myers five years to write, with research spanning centuries. “It’s important to me that readers feel they can lose themselves in this book. And if nothing else, I don’t think a novel of this nature has ever existed before.”

“Myers is known for his writing style, which often draws on working class culture, rural life, and the natural landscape of northern England.”

A fascinating mix of poetry, a short play, real historical accounts, contemporary prose – even the layout of the book is unexpected and enticing. “Certain sections allow the words space to breath, while others work as a more intense experience, a bombardment. Then there are parts where the font size diminishes, in order to represent the fading visions of one of the narrators. I spent a lot of time on how the story looks on the page, so that the entire novel works as an object, a singular, solid work of art.”

Myers is known for his writing style, which often draws on working class culture, rural life, and the natural landscape of northern England. His work is characterised by its attention to detail, strong sense of place, and portrayal of characters from the margins of society. He puts his writing career down to “a disdain of and ineptitude for the rigours of a conventional working life.”

“I’m quite a productive writer, but in all other areas of my life I’m idle, and this seemed like the best profession to further facilitate that.”

So where is his favourite place in the north? The moors above Cragg Vale? Durham Cathedral?

“My bed,” Benjamin laughs. “I love to sleep and read there. And also Barter Books in Alnwick. I love to sleep and read there too.”

Cuddy by Benjamin Myers is published by Bloomsbury

NorthernLife Mar/Apr 23