Description
Book SynopsisAn England divided. From his remote moorland home, David Hartley assembles a gang of weavers and land-workers to embark upon a criminal enterprise that will capsize the economy and become the biggest fraud in British history.They are the Cragg Vale Coiners and their business is 'clipping' - the forging of coins, a treasonous offence punishable by death.A charismatic leader, Hartley cares for the poor and uses violence and intimidation against his opponents. He is also prone to self-delusion and strange visions of mythical creatures.When excise officer William Deighton vows to bring down the Coiners and one of their own becomes turncoat, Hartley's empire begins to crumble. With the industrial age set to change the face of England forever, the fate of his empire is under threat.Forensically assembled from historical accounts and legal documents, The Gallows Pole is a true story of resistance that combines poetry, landscape, crime and historical fiction, whose themes continue to resonate. Here is a rarely-told alternative history of the North.
Trade ReviewWinner of the Walter Scott Prize for Historic Fiction 2018; Winner of A Roger Deakin Award; “Powerful, visceral writing, historical fiction at its best. Benjamin Myers is one to watch.” – Pat Barker; “A phenomenal and highly energised novel.’ Sebastian Barry; “From the half-forgotten history of northern working men on the brink of the Industrial Revolution, Myers has unearthed a powerful story which he tells with great vigour.” – The Sunday Times; “This powerful novel is as darkly lovely as Emily Bronte’s work” – Joanne Harris; “A brilliant, extraordinary book.” – Mary Anne Hobbs, 6 Music; “A roaring furnace of a novel. In telling a big story about a small place, Benjamin Myers portrays social upheavals which have a sharp contemporary echo, as well as bringing to light a little-known and fascinating fragment of rural English history…he meets the challenge for every author of historical fiction – bringing alive the past and speaking forcefully to the readers of today” – The Walter Scott Prize Judges 2018; “Myers’s obsession with place and power is urgently contemporary. Society is fragile. The walls can, and do, collapse. Today the political shocks of Brexit and Trump make this obvious in a way it hasn’t been for a long time: the strand of malevolent machismo that seemed like deliberately shocking Gothic in Myers’s 2014 novel Beastings feels closer to home now. It seems as though Myers, seer-like, has merely had to wait for the world outwardly to become as he long ago divined it to be…His element is violence and, in his element, he is thrilling: intelligent, dangerous and near untouchable.” – New Statesman; “Not only one of my books of the year, but it also has my cover of the year: Sergeant Pepper meets The Omen by way of 1930s paperbacks. It’s the best thing Myers has done; fierce gale-driven prose that speaks to and of the northern English landscape out of which the story rises.” – Robert Macfarlane, Book of the Year, The Big Issue; “Benjamin Myers is a poet and his evocation of Hartley’s moorland home is superb…this is a brutal tale told with an original, muscular voice.” – The Times, summer reads pick 2018; “Myers’s prose is loaded with beautiful old words that point to a deep understanding of how language, place and identity combine. A rich, mythic brew” – The TLS
