Cuddy

Bloomsbury presents Cuddy by Benjamin Myers, read by Colin Mace, Hannah Barrie, Jimmy Chisholm, Rowena Gray and Samuel Edward Cook.
Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2023
Chosen as a book to watch out for in 2023 by The Times, Observer, Guardian, Irish Times and Scotsman
'It's a testament to the cast of five that they manage to unite these apparently disparate elements. The effect as each story gives way to the next is one of history ebbing and flowing, of individuals united by place and past.' FINANCIAL TIMES
'An epic the north has long deserved' FINANCIAL TIMES
'A sensational piece of storytelling - A singular and significant achievement' GUARDIAN
'Marvellous, artful, enchanted' DAILY TELEGRAPH
'Cements Myers's standing as one of our finest, and most deftly imaginative, writers' I NEWS
The triumphant new novel from the Walter Scott Prize-winning author of The Gallows Pole and The Offing
Cuddy is a bold and experimental retelling of the story of the hermit St. Cuthbert, unofficial patron saint of the North of England.
Incorporating poetry, prose, play, diary and real historical accounts to create a novel like no other, Cuddy straddles historical eras - from the first Christian-slaying Viking invaders of the holy island of Lindisfarne in the 8th century to a contemporary England defined by class and austerity.
Along the way we meet brewers and masons, archers and academics, monks and labourers, their visionary voices and stories echoing through their ancestors and down the ages.
And all the while at the centre sits Durham Cathedral and the lives of those who live and work around this place of pilgrimage - their dreams, desires, connections and communities.

Benjamin Myers was born in Durham in 1976. He is the author of ten books, including The Offing, which was an international bestseller and selected for the Radio 2 Book Club; The Gallows Pole, which won the Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction and has been adapted as a BBC series by Shane Meadows; Beastings which was awarded the Portico Prize for Literature, and Pig Iron which won the inaugural Gordon Burn Prize. He has also published non-fiction, poetry and crime novels and his journalism has appeared in publications including the Guardian, New Statesman, TLS, Caught by the River and many more. He lives in the Upper Calder Valley, West Yorkshire.
benjaminmyerswriter.com / @BenMyers1