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.

Book two, The Mason’s Mark, carries us forward to 1346. Fletcher Bullard – champion archer, domestic abuser – is off fighting the Scots. 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 stories we tell one another are all that shall remain when time dies and even the strongest sculpted stones crumble to sand.

There's no doubt that Creamer, Ella (12 July 2023). "Royal Society of Literature aims to broaden representation as it announces 62 new fellows". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved 31 July 2023. Cuddy is an extraordinary book. Is it my favourite by Myers? No. But there's still a lot to love here. The book is told in single stories that make a whole - each section has a different format and style, and different characters. 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!). It's going to be hard to find a reader who loves every section equally and there will inevitably be highs and lows. Duffy, Kevin (29 December 2016). "The Society of Authors' Roger Deakin Award 2016". Bluemoose Books. Archived from the original on 16 January 2021.

Other stories

Myers' books span literary fiction, nature/landscape writing, crime, historical fiction and poetry. He has been translated into eight languages. He has published several poetry collections and written a number of music biographies which have been widely translated. He is a founding member of the Brutalists, a literary collective including authors Adelle Stripe and Tony O'Neill. His second novel, Richard: A Novel, was a fictionalized account of the life of musician Richey Edwards. It was published by Picador in October 2010, and polarised critical opinion. Tom Gatti, executive editor at The New Statesman said: “Congratulations toBenjamin Myers for his extraordinary novelCuddy– a prime example of the sort of ambitious, vital fiction that Goldsmiths and the New Statesman founded the prize to celebrate.”