It's going to be hard to find a reader who loves every section equally and there will inevitably be highs and lows. 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.

Myers reworks these stories to give us a masterpiece deserving of a place on this year’s Booker Prize longlist. This type of novel is very hard to get right and I don't often love them (it's why I've never got on with the David Mitchell books I've tried for example!The cathedral is a wonder … in its elegance and grotesquery, its shimmering and its solidity, Myers captures it accurately.

Here we have all the poetry and intensity of his writing, all the excellence of his historical fiction and it is all mixed together with some literary experimentation that makes you think Myers is really going places with his writing.A set of stories from past to present with St Cuthbert (Cuddy) as a guiding presence in some way in each. We are experiencing delays with deliveries to many countries, but in most cases local services have now resumed.

The novel moves through time concentrating on a collection of characters who share characteristics through time but are mostly living in the area around Durham Cathedral .Myers weaves recurring symbols and images throughout his stories and the overall effect is of the unifying influence of myth, story and shared experiences across the ages, and in particular, the long, beneficent influence of the the Saxon saint at the centre of this remarkable story. I also visited Durham and Lindisfarne last month and always love a setting-driven story and was curious about the central St Cuthbert. In this first story we meet the young cook who is part of the haliwerfolk, feeding the monks with whatever can be found and also tending to their ailments – their aches and pains and even their tooth aches. Myers explores several topics, many of them quite obvious: the difference between faith and religion, the cost of true devotion, and the interplay between Art and Science. Cuthbert’s remains have been moved several times to avoid Viking raiders and they are on the move again with a group of monks plus a few others on the lookout for a final resting place.