Cuddy is a novel that combines poetry, prose, diary entries and real historical accounts to relate the story of St. Myers has written this in the flamboyant wordy style of the period, catching the nuances effortlessly. From these seeds of historical truth and strange mythology, Benjamin Myers spins an unforgettable story of love and loss that breaks free of realism, entering a thrilling space both hilarious and terrifying. You may well be inspired to do so, if only to prolong your acquaintanceship with its landscapes and people; but you might equally embark on this journey as I did, knowing next to nothing about the titular figure, and find yourself swept along on a tide of pure literary sensation. Several more sections follow in which we follow a young girl with her visions of a cathedral and her visitations from Cuthbert (AD995); we live in the shadow of that cathedral (Durham cathedral as we know it) with a woman (AD1346) whose husband is a famous archer but is also abusive and she falls for another, more gentle, man; we read the journal of an Oxford antiquarian (AD1827) as he travels to the north of England (which he despises) to witness the disinterment of a body in the cathedral; and we follow Michael Cuthbert in AD2019 as he cares for his mother and scratches a living as a labourer, eventually finding more stable work at the cathedral.

When is historical inquiry illuminating, and are there times one should simply "let his story lie" undisturbed?This is always near impossible to pull off and, while I admire the ambition, I feel like it could have been pared back a little. The first section is perhaps the most innovative, with prose poetry mixed with a story told from attributed quotes from various sources, ancient and modern, on which Ben Myers has drawn. The Corpse in the Cathedral is a ghost story all the more satisfying for being populated by ghosts we have already met. 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.

It was less about Cuddy than about the people surrounding his memory and the place embodying it, and it grew increasingly distant from the initial historical pull as it got closer to the present.When his wife, Eda, meets Francis Rolfe, one of a team of masons engaged in repairing and enhancing Durham Cathedral’s decorative stonework, what occurs will live on in the stone. The book is told in single stories that make a whole - each section has a different format and style, and different characters. But I can recognise that this is a step up from what Myers has written before, and that it will bring him to the attention of people who perhaps haven't read his work before. Recipient of the Roger Deakin Award and first published by Bluemoose Books, Myers' novel The Gallows Pole was published to acclaim in 2017 and was winner of the Walter Scott Prize 2018 - the world's largest prize for historical fiction.

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. It's bold, imaginative and I could've read the story of Cuddy's bones being carried around for many more pages!

I loved what Myers was trying to do here and show how history gets warped and changed by us and our stories over the years. If all of this sounds too heady or terribly uninteresting, there is good news: The five narratives which contribute to the book's overarching story are excellent. The story of Saint Cuthbert, ‘the patron saint of Northern England’ is told through the experiences of a tenth century orphan, Ediva, who is travelling with a band of monks on their long journey with Cuddy’s corpse at the time of the Viking raids, the abused wife of a violent Durham stonemason in the fourteenth century, an Oxford historian straight out of an M R James story attending the opening of Cuthbert’s tomb in Durham Cathedral in 1827 (this section I found less convincing than the others and one particular glaring anachronism served to underline that the narrative voice here wasn’t quite believable) and Michael Cuthbert, a labourer working on the cathedral in 2019.

A man who lived alone on a rocky island in the North Sea, preferring the solitude and the wild birds to the company of men. There is a continuum which Myers weaves through an ancient folklore which challenges the powerful and defends the vulnerable. Cuthbert and his influence on the Christian faith over the last 1400 years, this is a deeply philosophical novel. The problem is, when a book starts with such an extraordinary beginning, it's very easy for the other sections of the book to pale in comparison.I've read several of Benjamin Myres books and haven't been able to put them down, but not this one, not for me, I'm afraid. Cuddy is a shortened form of Cuthbert and refers to St Cuthbert of Lindisfarne, a seventh century shepherd boy who became a monk and then prior of Melrose Abbey and finally a hermit on the island of Lindisfarne.