Cuddy

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Book II tells of masons repairing the cathedral stonework in 1346 and makes the saint an actor in condemning an abusive husband. The third book offers a pastiche of an M. R. James ghost story, set in 1827, when a sceptical professor finds his confidence in science challenged at the opening of the saint’s tomb. And, in the final part, a young labourer, Michael Cuthbert, has his own encounter with the numinous when unexpectedly given work in the cathedral while his mother lies dying at home.

Cuddy is a book told through four connected novels, plus an interlude, at different key moments throughout the history of Durham Cathedral and its founding as a home for the relics of St Cuthbert. (Although the choice of 1827 for one part also allows an implicit dig at Liz Truss!)The tide had retreated late that evening, laying a ledge of grey sand in its wake where all else now… In 2014 Myers won the Society of Author's Tom-Gallon Trust Award [22] for his short story, 'The Folk Song Singer'. He was runner-up in the same prize in 2018 for his story 'A Thousand Acres Of English Soil'. His poem 'The Path To Pendle Hill' was selected by New Statesman as one of its Poems Of The Year 2015 [23] and work from the same collection were read by Myers on BBC1 programme Countryfile.

Rating this a 3* read tells barely half the story. For a start, nothing about it is middling, or average. So perhaps even rating it all is a futile pursuit.

The Church Times Archive

Section 1, a kind of epic poem telling the story of the Haliwerfolc, a group of dedicated monks and others who carried Cuddy's body around the north to help it avoid desecration by the invading vikings, is glorious. It's one of the best passages I have ever read. Inventive, vivid, strange and peopled with great characters, it had me crying 'masterpiece!'. As Michael comes to realise, he too is part of never-ending history, ‘one more link in a chain of people … a continuum’