Cuddy: Winner of the 2023 Goldsmiths Prize

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The first part of the novel, Saint Cuddy, is told in the voice of Ediva, an orphan taken in by the monks as a child, now travelling with them as healer, cook and helper as they search for a final resting place for Cuddy’s coffin. Ediva is alive to the rhythms of the landscape in a way that marks her out as different; she also sees visions of the future cathedral – a building “bigger than anything man has ever built, so big it rears up like a mountain, like a great beast” – where the saint will finally be laid to rest.

Book four, an account from a visiting professor in 1827, who has no love of the uncultured north. He is there for the opening of Cuthbert’s tomb once more. This time the decorative casket that has held the saint’s body for eight hundred years is ruined. Myers has written this in the flamboyant wordy style of the period, catching the nuances effortlessly. Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin, because it’s near-perfect, and Ask Dr Mueller: The Writings of Cookie Mueller because it contains dirt, humour and wisdom. The writing is so beautiful even when some of it makes little sense. As you read you initially feel impressions of the story rather than discerning any plot but as the parts move on the stories become more concrete. After finding some of the earlier parts a bit hard to fully engage with I eventually fell into the story completely and couldn’t stop reading.BENJAMIN: Writing is fun. When I do it, I feel free. Not always, but often. I get to be king of my own kingdom, or at least until the doorbell goes and there’s a parcel to be retrieved from the hedge, or my faithful hound is letting me know that he needs emptying. But inspiration comes from the love of the form, really: if you want to write, ideas will hopefully come. And if they don’t, just log-on to BBC news, buy your local paper or go and sit in a library for a morning: they’re full of endless stories, or at least the seeds of ideas.

As a journalist he has written about the arts and nature for publications including New Statesman, The Guardian, The Spectator, NME, Mojo, Time Out, New Scientist, Caught By The River, The Morning Star, Vice, The Quietus, Melody Maker and numerous others. The triumphant new novel from Myers was announced as the winner of the Goldsmiths Prizein association with the New Statesman, at a ceremony in London on Wednesday 8 November 2023. As a teenager Myers began writing for British weekly Melody Maker. [6] In 1997 he became their staff writer while residing in the Oval Mansions squat for several years. In 2011 he published an article, about his brief time as an intern at News of the World. [6] He has spoken about failing English Literature at A-level and being rejected by "more than a hundred" universities before being accepted by the University of Bedfordshire (formerly Luton University). [7] Work [ edit ] Journalism [ edit ]Myers reworks these stories to give us a masterpiece deserving of a place on this year’s Booker Prize longlist. The finely woven stories even use lines from the referenced works of multiple historians; an inventive way to set some historical narrative alongside the fiction.