Gallows Pole
Now also available as an eBook from Amazon.com, Apple Books, barnesandnoble.com, or anywhere eBooks are sold
Winner of the 2018 Walter Scott Prize, the world’s largest prize for historical fiction.
Third Man Books debut fiction novel, The Gallows Pole by Benjamin Myers, is for fans of Cormac McCarthy, Ted Hughes, Daniel Woodrell, David Peace. Set in the moorland hills of 18th century Yorkshire, The Gallows Pole is the true story of an organized crime of forgers known as the Cragg Vale Coiners. Lead by the charismatic “King” David Hartley, a man prone to violence and mystical visions, the Coiners rise to glory until the bloody murder of a government official brings them to the attention of the authorities. An English western, The Gallows Pole is a poetic and visceral telling of a secret history and a wild landscape. King David Hartley could be described, too, as Yorkshire’s Robin Hood. However, this could only be Robin Hood if he was really violent, lusty, and greedy. A story based on true history, The Gallows Pole also explores contemporary themes including wealth, abuse of power, class, corruptions, borders and boundaries and national identity. It is a novel set in the past that can tell us much about the present and future.
“Atmospheric alt-crime at its best." – NME
“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
“This powerful novel is as darkly lovely as Emily Bronte’s work” – Joanne Harris
Author:
Benjamin Myers
Benjamin Myers was born in Durham, UK, in 1976. He is in an award-winning author, poet and journalist, translated into several languages. His most recent novel The Offing was a bestseller in the UK, and serialized on BBC Radio, while The Gallows Pole won the Walter Scott Prize – the world’s largest prize for historical fiction - and has been identified as a contemporary cult classic. His novel Beastings (2014) won the Portico Prize For Literature and was recipient of the Northern Writers’ Award. Pig Iron (2012) was the winner of the inaugural Gordon Burn Prize and runner-up in The Guardian’s Not The Booker Prize. A controversial combination of biography and novel, Richard (2010) was a bestseller, chosen as a Sunday Times book of the year. Myers’ ‘folk crime’ novels Turning Blue (2016) and These Darkening Days (2017) were widely acclaimed by critics including Val McDermid. As a journalist he has written about music, the arts and nature for publications including New Statesman, The Guardian, The Spectator, NME, Mojo, Time Out, New Scientist, Caught By The River and many others. His short stories and poetry have appeared in dozens of print and small press anthologies, chapbooks and underground obscurities. Benjamin Myers currently lives in the Upper Calder Valley, West Yorkshire, UK.
