Benjamin Myers

**Chosen as a book to watch out for in 2023 by The Times, Observer, Guardian, Irish TImes and Scotsman**'An epic the north has long deserved' FINANCIAL TIMES 'A sensational piece of storytelling ... A singular and significant achievement' GUARDIAN'Marvellous, artful, enchanted' DAILY TELEGRAPHThe triumphant new novel from the Walter Scott Prize-winning author of The Gallows Pole and The OffingCuddy 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.

Cuddy

Laura Dobie

Death is a surprise party you knew all along was to be thrown in your honour.

'Of course, travelling around northern England for years with a dead body and assorted other relics in a wooden box must have proved logistically awkward.' 

Cuthbert and the Northumbrian Saints by Paul Frodsham

Of course the monks insist upon a further two days of vigil anyway.

Edmund says: Oh, dear sainted Cuddy spoke to me. Stitheard says: And to me. I do believe we are close. Franco says: A sign, a sign, I received a sign from Him. Chad says: Our piety and prayers are being rewarded. Eadmer says: I think this might be the place, brothers. Bishop Aldhun says: Yonder hill. This is to be his home. Hunred says: Ediva told us all this over two days ago.

The stories we tell one another are all that shall remain when time dies and even the strongest sculpted stones crumble to sand.

Naturally, as soon as my chamber was illuminated such noises were no more, though I once again felt the sense of them, like the shudder that follows a draught- slammed door, or the brief silence that follows a dropped bottle in a tavern.

The remnants of last night litter the stained paving slabs of the bus station with all the signs and symbols of wanton hedonism. Tipped polystyrene fast-food cartons trail sliced meat, shredded red cabbage and chilli sauce the colour of blood. There is a stain of slopped curry too, and then close by some broken glass and a few drops of actual blood; each smeared deposit a separate story, still waiting to be told. 

There is a strong stench of urine, the invisible scent markings of feral men after midnight staining the cold concrete. The stench of it is the perfume of bus stations everywhere; the desperate reek of transience at the crossroads of the intoxicated.

Over there he can see thick wet concrete is being poured into the trenches of the frozen earth and poured billboards surround the site, promising new branches of B&Q, KFC, Currys, Sports Direct and a drive-thru McDonald's, everything a household needs, and in close proximity, where once cows idly grazed the pastures. Soon, as early as the coming spring perhaps, the Soon, mirrored panels that are about to be erected will reflect a thousand suns, and customers will arrive before the grass seeds that will be planted in the landscaped strips of soil have even come to fruition. They won't have to endure the inconvenience of walking far from their cars. Much money will be made here.

…he thinks of the animals that will surely be displaced by all this activity. The rabbits and the badgers, the unseen trails of the roaming fox. Deer too, retreating to the shrinking copses. He thinks of the birds that will take flight at the surprise of the noises to come. There will be crushed nests, hastily vacated, and shattered eggs, when some of the perimeter trees are felled, their branches tipping out squirrels and their roots ripping away at subterranean setts.

The flags are already planted to mark out what will be the central car park around which the retail units are being built, each as big as a parish church. He bites the inside of his cheek.

…he enters the cathedral and steps back into a place that feels both familiar and mysterious, as if a hundred past lives are nodding to one another in wordless acknowledgement, the endless echoes of his ancestors' voices forever trapped in the stone.

Cuddy quotes

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