Myers, Benjamin (3 January 2020). " 'I was half-insane with anxiety': how I wrote myself into a breakdown". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved 3 January 2020– via www.theguardian.com.

Benjaminwill appear at the Cambridge Literary Festival, in conversation with Goldsmiths Prize judgeMaddie Mortimerwhose first novelMaps of Our Spectacular Bodieswas shortlisted for the 2022 Goldsmiths Prize and won the Desmond Elliott Prize, andTom Gatti executive editor at theNew Statesman.The final book is the story of Michael, a teenager labourer who in 2017 begins work at the cathedral among the repairs to the medieval masonry. This is Myers at his most modern and antagonistic. Take this short description of Durham’s early morning bus station, rank with the detritus of the night before: As Michael comes to realise, he too is part of never-ending history, ‘one more link in a chain of people … a continuum’ I want to ask you what’s next but I also don’t want to, as with Ben Myers the surprise is part of the joy of reading. So, if not what’s next, perhaps what’s the book you’d write if there were no limits? The one that makes you think, “Could I?”. The book itself is separated into distinct times during which many people take centre stage. I love the differences in language and behaviour that he's captured, along with the changes in the story of how Cuthbert ended up at Durham and why the cathedral was built there.

Cuddy, Benjamin Myers’s bewitching tenth novel, starts with a short history lesson about St Cuthbert, a 7th-century shepherd boy who became a monk after experiencing a vision. He died as Bishop of Lindisfarne in 687 on the even more remote island of Inner Farne, off the Northumbrian coast. Today, his remains lie in a shrine in Durham Cathedral, which was founded in his honour in 1093 and draws 700,000 visitors a year. Myers’s prose and verse are arresting, if sometimes rather pretentious. He speaks powerfully about a well-loved northern figure. But the real Cuthbert can best be found in the anonymous biography written on Lindisfarne just after the first relocation of his much travelled bones. Cuddy, his eighth novel, combines poetry, prose, play, diary and real historical accounts of the story and legacy of St. Cuthbert and his connection to Durham Cathedral. [20] [21] Honours [ edit ] Myers’ lyrical book, which took almost five years to write, stands in a genre of its own. Its constant links of place and Cuthbert’s legacy do more than adhere each section into a novel: they serve as a reminder that we are but custodians of a world we inherited. Cuddy cements Myers’s standing as one of our finest, and most deftly imaginative, writers.Charlesworth, Antonia (23 May 2022). "Radical and gently revolutionary". Big Issue North . Retrieved 16 July 2022. In Book I, Cuddy, the dead saint, speaks to Ediva, a young woman adopted by the haliwerfolc, the “people of the saint” as their cook and helper. That community carried the relics of their saint in his wooden coffin away from Viking raids on the island of Lindisfarne until eventually Ediva helps them to find a home for Cuddy on the hill like an island in 995.

Myers, Benjamin (2019). The gallows pole. London. ISBN 978-1-5266-1115-4. OCLC 1102319901. {{ cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher ( link) But through all the changes the one voice that never leaves is that of the saintly Cuthbert who never quite seems to get his wish to be left alone to worship God. In this first story we meet the young cook who is part of the haliwerfolk, feeding the monks with whatever can be found and also tending to their ailments – their aches and pains and even their tooth aches. This is a poem that she utters and which I though is excellent. Jordison, Sam (15 October 2012). "Not the Booker prize: The winner | Books". The Guardian. theguardian.com . Retrieved 12 August 2014.The stories we tell one another are all that shall remain when time dies and even the strongest sculpted stones crumple to sand.’ Portico Prize For Literature. Gordon Burn Prize. Roger Deakin Award. Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. Goldsmiths Prize.

I read the masterful Happy Like Murderers by Gordon Burn twice. Then I was asked to write a new foreword but had to construct it from memory. It’s the best British true crime account, but I couldn’t step into the world of Fred and Rose West a third time. There’s also a Booker-longlisted title that was so bad I still get angry when I think about it. Writerly loyalty forbids me from naming it. Fisher, Mark (22 October 2021). "The Offing review – soft-pedalled adaptation of Benjamin Myers novel". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved 10 March 2023.Turning Blue (2016) was described as a "folk crime" novel, and praised by writers including Val McDermid. A sequel These Darkening Days followed in 2017.