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The Gallows Pole
“I saw them. Stag-headed men dancing at on the moor at midnight, nostrils flared and steam rising...”
An 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.
An 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.
371 pages, Paperback
First published May 17, 2017
About the author
Benjamin Myers
37 books994 followersBenjamin Myers was born in Durham, UK, in 1976.
He is an award-winning author and journalist whose recent novel Cuddy (2023) won the Goldsmiths Prize.
His first short story collection, Male Tears, was published by Bloomsbury in 2021.
His novel The Offing was published by Bloomsbury in 2019 and is a best-seller in Germany. It was serialised by Radio 4's Book At Bedtime and Radio 2 Book club choice. It is being developed for stage and has been optioned for film.
The non-fiction book Under The Rock, was shortlisted for The Portico Prize For Literature in 2020.
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. It has been published in the US by Third Man Books and in 2023 was adapted by director Shane Meadows for the BBC/A24.
The Gallows Pole was re-issued by Bloomsbury, alongside previous titles Beastings and Pig Iron.
Several of Myers' novels have been released as audiobooks, read by actor Ralph Ineson.
Turning Blue (2016) was described as a "folk crime" novel, and praised by writers including Val McDermid. A sequel These Darkening Days followed in 2017.
His novel Beastings (2014) won the Portico Prize For Literature, was the recipient of the Northern Writers’ Award and longlisted for a Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Award 2015. Widely acclaimed, it featured on several end of year lists, and was chosen by Robert Macfarlane in The Big Issue as one of his books of 2014.
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 and chosen as a Sunday Times book of the year.
Myers’ short story ‘The Folk Song Singer’ was awarded the Tom-Gallon Prize in 2014 by the Society Of Authors and published by Galley Beggar Press. His short stories and poetry have appeared in dozens of anthologies.
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.
He currently lives in the Upper Calder Valley, West Yorkshire, UK.
He is an award-winning author and journalist whose recent novel Cuddy (2023) won the Goldsmiths Prize.
His first short story collection, Male Tears, was published by Bloomsbury in 2021.
His novel The Offing was published by Bloomsbury in 2019 and is a best-seller in Germany. It was serialised by Radio 4's Book At Bedtime and Radio 2 Book club choice. It is being developed for stage and has been optioned for film.
The non-fiction book Under The Rock, was shortlisted for The Portico Prize For Literature in 2020.
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. It has been published in the US by Third Man Books and in 2023 was adapted by director Shane Meadows for the BBC/A24.
The Gallows Pole was re-issued by Bloomsbury, alongside previous titles Beastings and Pig Iron.
Several of Myers' novels have been released as audiobooks, read by actor Ralph Ineson.
Turning Blue (2016) was described as a "folk crime" novel, and praised by writers including Val McDermid. A sequel These Darkening Days followed in 2017.
His novel Beastings (2014) won the Portico Prize For Literature, was the recipient of the Northern Writers’ Award and longlisted for a Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Award 2015. Widely acclaimed, it featured on several end of year lists, and was chosen by Robert Macfarlane in The Big Issue as one of his books of 2014.
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 and chosen as a Sunday Times book of the year.
Myers’ short story ‘The Folk Song Singer’ was awarded the Tom-Gallon Prize in 2014 by the Society Of Authors and published by Galley Beggar Press. His short stories and poetry have appeared in dozens of anthologies.
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.
He currently lives in the Upper Calder Valley, West Yorkshire, UK.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 590 reviews
December 21, 2017
An impressive recreation of West Yorkshire in the late eighteenth century, this historical novel tells the tale of the rise and fall of the Cragg Vale Coiners and their leader "King David" Hartley. The coiners profited by clipping coins and forging fake money, operating from well defended bases on the moors above the Calder Valley. Myers knows his area inside out, and the book is full of atmospheric descriptions and brilliant writing.
The gang's success was largely due to their local popularity - the Robin Hood element of defending ordinary people against their distant and oppressive landlords carries a strong resonance in the light of the Brexit vote. In addition to their feudal landlords, the area's traditional means of subsistence were also under threat from the Industrial Revolution, particularly the replacement of hand-loom weaving with the efficient but dehumanising water powered mills.
Myers includes a bibliography of "Sources and Inspirations" at the end, and among the many historical reference books he cites are a few novels. These include Paul Kingsnorth's The Wake, which has a similar charismatic central character defending a doomed way of life against the forces of change, and is also written in a colourful hybrid language, echoes of which can be found in the parts of the book allegedly written by David Hartley from his cell in York prison. Also cited is Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang, which also has similar elements, again the Robin Hood element of fighting for ordinary people against oppressive masters. Both of these books also allow their central characters to tell their own story. Also included are poetry (including Ted Hughes' Elmet) and songs by local folk musicians including Bob Pegg and Steve Tilston.
Hartley's confessions are written in English but full of local dialect and spelling inconsistencies. They contain quite a lot of local mythology, invoking all manner of local spirits and moorland tales, and dominated by his dreams in which his destiny is controlled by the stag-men of the moor. This element lifts the book beyond the historical narrative, which is unsparingly unsentimental and makes the violence and petty betrayals of the coiners as central as the story of the excise man Deighton who succeeds in getting Hartley arrested but is then murdered. The gang is also responsible for other brutal murders as they seek to protect their secrets.
There is also plenty of atmospheric writing about the landscape itself, from the hills in Halifax where hanged men where left to rot in public to the moors themselves, where the unwary can be trapped in deep peatbogs and the surrounding woods and cliffs where the gang's eyes and ears lurked.
This review cannot really do justice to the book, but it is the best I can do in a limited amount of time. This is another book I would recommend wholeheartedly.
The gang's success was largely due to their local popularity - the Robin Hood element of defending ordinary people against their distant and oppressive landlords carries a strong resonance in the light of the Brexit vote. In addition to their feudal landlords, the area's traditional means of subsistence were also under threat from the Industrial Revolution, particularly the replacement of hand-loom weaving with the efficient but dehumanising water powered mills.
Myers includes a bibliography of "Sources and Inspirations" at the end, and among the many historical reference books he cites are a few novels. These include Paul Kingsnorth's The Wake, which has a similar charismatic central character defending a doomed way of life against the forces of change, and is also written in a colourful hybrid language, echoes of which can be found in the parts of the book allegedly written by David Hartley from his cell in York prison. Also cited is Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang, which also has similar elements, again the Robin Hood element of fighting for ordinary people against oppressive masters. Both of these books also allow their central characters to tell their own story. Also included are poetry (including Ted Hughes' Elmet) and songs by local folk musicians including Bob Pegg and Steve Tilston.
Hartley's confessions are written in English but full of local dialect and spelling inconsistencies. They contain quite a lot of local mythology, invoking all manner of local spirits and moorland tales, and dominated by his dreams in which his destiny is controlled by the stag-men of the moor. This element lifts the book beyond the historical narrative, which is unsparingly unsentimental and makes the violence and petty betrayals of the coiners as central as the story of the excise man Deighton who succeeds in getting Hartley arrested but is then murdered. The gang is also responsible for other brutal murders as they seek to protect their secrets.
There is also plenty of atmospheric writing about the landscape itself, from the hills in Halifax where hanged men where left to rot in public to the moors themselves, where the unwary can be trapped in deep peatbogs and the surrounding woods and cliffs where the gang's eyes and ears lurked.
This review cannot really do justice to the book, but it is the best I can do in a limited amount of time. This is another book I would recommend wholeheartedly.
November 20, 2021
My second novel by Ben Myers. This is a historical novel set in eighteenth century Yorkshire, on the moors. It is the story of the Craggy Vale Coiners. Coiners clipped a small amount of metal from a coin and melted down the clippings to make new coins. The characters involved are historical and centred around the leader of the coiners “King David” Hartley, as described by Myers:
“appeared of the earth, of the moors. A man of smoke and peat and heather and fire, his body built for the hills.”
There is a museum to the coiners and Myers spoke to the descendants of Hartley whilst researching the book.
This is a brutal, violent and very masculine book, there are very few female characters. As the Guardian review comments, just imagine the worst that can happen to a character, what Myers has in mind will be worse. The enemies are the oncoming Industrial Revolution and all representatives of The Crown and authority. The motto “Clip a coin and fuck the Crown” pretty much sums it up. There is a nod back to old legends like Robin Hood:
“He who had poached and butchered a nobleman’s stag ... Hunger then it was that had led this poor soul to the gallows steps – a hunger for warm meat rather than cold-blooded murder. Not greed but necessity.”
There is a definite harking back in the face of industrial development:
“we lived as clans … protection was our purpose – protection from any incomers. That and the providing of food and fire, and seeding your women. You hunted and you defended and you fought for your corner of England under the great green canopy. You lived proud and you celebrated your fathers that spawned you and honoured your mothers that birthed you.”
The narrative is interspersed with extracts from a diary written by Hartley whilst in jail in York (imaginary I think). There is a six part TV series being filmed for the BBC.
Myers writes landscape and nature rather well and his turns of phrase are excellent. He also uses folklore and wildlife lore which is woven into the narrative.
It is an analysis of power and where it really lies and a fable about standing against the growth of imperial power:
“It’s time to split the coins proper and make the money that is ours. It’s time to clip a coin and fuck the crown. It’s time to let the bastards know that the only law is our law… valley man fight and valley men sing and valley men bow to none …. Fuck the king because you can be sure the king is already fucking you … A hand loom in a wool loft never killed a child. Only the men from the cities with their stone cathedrals of mass production killed children,”
It will be interesting to see how the TV production fares.
“appeared of the earth, of the moors. A man of smoke and peat and heather and fire, his body built for the hills.”
There is a museum to the coiners and Myers spoke to the descendants of Hartley whilst researching the book.
This is a brutal, violent and very masculine book, there are very few female characters. As the Guardian review comments, just imagine the worst that can happen to a character, what Myers has in mind will be worse. The enemies are the oncoming Industrial Revolution and all representatives of The Crown and authority. The motto “Clip a coin and fuck the Crown” pretty much sums it up. There is a nod back to old legends like Robin Hood:
“He who had poached and butchered a nobleman’s stag ... Hunger then it was that had led this poor soul to the gallows steps – a hunger for warm meat rather than cold-blooded murder. Not greed but necessity.”
There is a definite harking back in the face of industrial development:
“we lived as clans … protection was our purpose – protection from any incomers. That and the providing of food and fire, and seeding your women. You hunted and you defended and you fought for your corner of England under the great green canopy. You lived proud and you celebrated your fathers that spawned you and honoured your mothers that birthed you.”
The narrative is interspersed with extracts from a diary written by Hartley whilst in jail in York (imaginary I think). There is a six part TV series being filmed for the BBC.
Myers writes landscape and nature rather well and his turns of phrase are excellent. He also uses folklore and wildlife lore which is woven into the narrative.
It is an analysis of power and where it really lies and a fable about standing against the growth of imperial power:
“It’s time to split the coins proper and make the money that is ours. It’s time to clip a coin and fuck the crown. It’s time to let the bastards know that the only law is our law… valley man fight and valley men sing and valley men bow to none …. Fuck the king because you can be sure the king is already fucking you … A hand loom in a wool loft never killed a child. Only the men from the cities with their stone cathedrals of mass production killed children,”
It will be interesting to see how the TV production fares.
June 18, 2018
Now winner of the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction - a book I read twice in 2017 due to its longlisting for the Republic of Consciousness Prize.
Bluemoose Books is an independent publisher based in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, which describes itself as a “‘family’ of readers and writers, passionate about the written word and stories, [who] delight in finding great new talent.”
Ben Myers is a writer of fiction and of musical biographies which impressively (at least in my view) include System of a Down, Johnny Rotten, Muse, Green Day and The Clash.
This book is a fictionalised account of the real life activities of the Cragg Valley Coiners between 1767 and 1770. The Cragg Valley Coiners were a group of weavers and farm-labourers turned forgers, under the leadership of (King) David Hartley, who clipped gold coins and used the shavings to forge fake coins. The coiners efforts were opposed by the forces of law and order in the person of the local excise man William Deighton (backed by a well-connected solicitor Robert Parker who ensured that the full force of law, local and national government was bought to bare to break up the Coiners and execute their leaders, in particular Hartley).
The book is told in two alternating styles: a conventional third party narrative account, focusing mainly on David Hartley and Deighton, but also others around them such as Parker, Hartley’s brothers and main enforcers and an informant in his ranks; a series of extracts from an account supposedly written by Hartley while waiting for his trial and execution in York gaol, written in phonetically spelt English such as the example above.
The narrative account majors in deliberate repetition (particularly of names) and rythym, the book follows Deighton and Hartley as they walk the moors and was conceived, research and partly written [by the author] on foot, at an average of 5 miles per day through woods and across moors around West Yorkshire. A sense of place, season, weather and nature (of the valley, the county of Yorkshire and the country of England) is essential to the story, and to Hartley’s worldview, and Myers excels in evocative description, a few examples of which are:
Another key element of the book is the clash of world views between Hartley, standing for tradition, community, and the old ways
And Deighton’s views of law and order
A clear theme of the book is of Hartley’s views that he (Hartley) is more of a Robin Hood figure while Deighton and Parker are cyphers for a heartless and irreversible force which will change England for ever and not in a good way
After David Hartley’s arrest, his brother reflects on the futility of further resistance:
Overall I found this a powerful and entertaining read with much merit, but one not without a number of faults:
The book I felt was a little too derivative of “The Wake” – the references to Old Ways, the delusionary nature of some of Hartley’s actions and believes (delusions which are not clear to him, and I was not always sure were clear to the author), the visions that Hartley sees of stagmen, the narrative style in the gaol-written story. I was therefore intrigued to see the book listed in the “Sources and Inspirations” at the end alongside lots of reference books – the fact that the Wake was set 700 years earlier and in a completely different landscape and part of England, meant that the close resemblance was slightly jarring to me.
The text can at times read anachronistically, for example at one point when Deighton is walking the moors, he reflects on the fitness he is gaining and refers to his walking (and the moors) as “Nature’s gymnasium” – surely an observation more fitted to the 21st Century. Hartley uses “ration” as a verb – 200 years before its first use as such and 250+ before its common usage. Hartley thinks of his trial as a foregone conclusion (which shows an unlikely knowledge of Shakespeare for an uneducated man) but renders it as a “foghorn concollusion” (a strange mis-spelling for a man of moor and town).
Finally at times, but only at times, the book reminded me of a film or novel about the Kray brothers, mythologising the activities of a group of psychopathically violent criminals.
But overall I would heartily recommend this book - and for a book set some 250 years ago, it is extremely topical.
Firstly the tale gives great insight into the historical foundation of the splits in English society which drove the Brexit vote.
Secondly, the discussions around coinage and its debasing are suddenly very relevant to a world obsessed with Bitcoin.
For those who have read the book and would like to understand more about coining, I can strongly recommend some 5* reads:
The excellent non-fictional tale
Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist
And (in my experience) one of the most intellectually stimulating series of novels ever written (for those who really want to understand the history of English politics, of money, of mathematics, of science)
Cryptonomicon
Quicksilver
The Confusion
The System of the World
This is why I rite these werds down for you new becors historee is only ever remembured by the powerfull and the welthy the book lerners in the big howses with thur fancy kwills … to these .. I say this is my story not my confeshun My story as I sor it These are not the werds of a man turned sower with regret and if I had another chance Id do it all the sayme again but bigger and better
Bluemoose Books is an independent publisher based in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, which describes itself as a “‘family’ of readers and writers, passionate about the written word and stories, [who] delight in finding great new talent.”
Ben Myers is a writer of fiction and of musical biographies which impressively (at least in my view) include System of a Down, Johnny Rotten, Muse, Green Day and The Clash.
This book is a fictionalised account of the real life activities of the Cragg Valley Coiners between 1767 and 1770. The Cragg Valley Coiners were a group of weavers and farm-labourers turned forgers, under the leadership of (King) David Hartley, who clipped gold coins and used the shavings to forge fake coins. The coiners efforts were opposed by the forces of law and order in the person of the local excise man William Deighton (backed by a well-connected solicitor Robert Parker who ensured that the full force of law, local and national government was bought to bare to break up the Coiners and execute their leaders, in particular Hartley).
The book is told in two alternating styles: a conventional third party narrative account, focusing mainly on David Hartley and Deighton, but also others around them such as Parker, Hartley’s brothers and main enforcers and an informant in his ranks; a series of extracts from an account supposedly written by Hartley while waiting for his trial and execution in York gaol, written in phonetically spelt English such as the example above.
The narrative account majors in deliberate repetition (particularly of names) and rythym, the book follows Deighton and Hartley as they walk the moors and was conceived, research and partly written [by the author] on foot, at an average of 5 miles per day through woods and across moors around West Yorkshire. A sense of place, season, weather and nature (of the valley, the county of Yorkshire and the country of England) is essential to the story, and to Hartley’s worldview, and Myers excels in evocative description, a few examples of which are:
Winter has just released its frosted grip on the valley and the sky was heavy with clouds that dragged themselves across it like broken animals behind him
Over the top of the trees smoke settled itself like tangled dirty white shearings of a summer flock not yet dipped and combed and dried
Autumn arrived like a burning ghost ship on the landscape’s tide to set the land alight. The fire of the trees’ turning spread far across the flanks and the ravens took flight to the highest climes as leaves fell like flung bodies. September had long slipped away. It was a charred thing now. Gone
Finally the sky was free of clouds and the stars cut through the night like smashed quartz sprinkled and thrown aloft to stick there.
The earthy sky was swollen grey. Soon it became too heavy to hold itself and it sagged through the night, finally falling apart in fragments of sleet
At first light fresh snowdrops quivered like rung bells … their delicate oversized white crowns hung heavy on thing green stems like the heads of newborn babies
Another key element of the book is the clash of world views between Hartley, standing for tradition, community, and the old ways
Sycamore and silver birch, he said. Beech and goat willow. Oak and Ash. Because this is our kingdom of Jorvikshire and time was the whole island was like this once. It was coast to coast with trees, all the way up to these higher lands of ours. The wildwood they called it. We lived as clans then. Under the trees when the trees were worshipped as Gods. Under the great rustling canopy. Tribal, like. Maybe a few of us still do. It was the way of the land then. You protected you and yours. You still do. Protection was our purpose. Protection from any incomers. That and the providing of food and fire, and seeding your women. You banded together close then and you hunted and you defended and you fought for your corner of England.
And Deighton’s views of law and order
Because viewed from afar night after night the solitary orange flame that burned tiny on the horizon had become for William Deighton a symbol for society’s undoing. It represented lawlessness. England’s downfall. The home of Hartley was a fertile bed for criminality and barbarism. Theft and forgery. Violence and mendacity. It was against progress. It was anti-empire, anti-monarchy, anti-government. No county or country could ever hope to flourish as long as people like Bell House’s inhabitants and their many pin-eyed, low-browed, dirty-fingered acolytes continue to ply their illicit trade without redress.
A clear theme of the book is of Hartley’s views that he (Hartley) is more of a Robin Hood figure while Deighton and Parker are cyphers for a heartless and irreversible force which will change England for ever and not in a good way
This lawmen thinks there is only one king worth recognising. But what does this man do for us and our families? What has he done for this valley, but help carve it up and sell it off? What have any of them done? Because it is lawmen and money men like this Robert Parker and flunkies like William Deighton who serve the wealthy bastards who for years have now staked a claim on these moorlands, these woods, these waterfalls. The same rich pheasant-fattened bastards who’ll have us out on our ears when the cotton men come. And they are coming – mark my words. The machines and the mills are coming, but it’ll not be enough for them to have us living in hedgerows and ditches like the cursed Diddakoi of the road. No. They won’t even let us make a penny to put a scran in our cupboards. They care nothing for the people of the valley like we do. [Everyone] that has given up their coin has made it twofold. We share our gains with the people because they are our people. We do not take our money and build castles to keep them out. We welcome them in
After David Hartley’s arrest, his brother reflects on the futility of further resistance:
The sky-line is thick with factory smoke now …. The land is being sold off. They’re putting up great chimneys of stone that are twice as tall as any tree and there are machines that do the work of a hundred men, and it takes mountains of coal to feed them. They’re sinking mines to get thje dusky diamonds from the ground to fuel the mills. Children are in their employment now ….. There are men who are said to be making fortunes far greater than anything we can imagine …. The weaving is finished and the farming is finished and the clipping is finished
Overall I found this a powerful and entertaining read with much merit, but one not without a number of faults:
The book I felt was a little too derivative of “The Wake” – the references to Old Ways, the delusionary nature of some of Hartley’s actions and believes (delusions which are not clear to him, and I was not always sure were clear to the author), the visions that Hartley sees of stagmen, the narrative style in the gaol-written story. I was therefore intrigued to see the book listed in the “Sources and Inspirations” at the end alongside lots of reference books – the fact that the Wake was set 700 years earlier and in a completely different landscape and part of England, meant that the close resemblance was slightly jarring to me.
The text can at times read anachronistically, for example at one point when Deighton is walking the moors, he reflects on the fitness he is gaining and refers to his walking (and the moors) as “Nature’s gymnasium” – surely an observation more fitted to the 21st Century. Hartley uses “ration” as a verb – 200 years before its first use as such and 250+ before its common usage. Hartley thinks of his trial as a foregone conclusion (which shows an unlikely knowledge of Shakespeare for an uneducated man) but renders it as a “foghorn concollusion” (a strange mis-spelling for a man of moor and town).
Finally at times, but only at times, the book reminded me of a film or novel about the Kray brothers, mythologising the activities of a group of psychopathically violent criminals.
But overall I would heartily recommend this book - and for a book set some 250 years ago, it is extremely topical.
Firstly the tale gives great insight into the historical foundation of the splits in English society which drove the Brexit vote.
Secondly, the discussions around coinage and its debasing are suddenly very relevant to a world obsessed with Bitcoin.
For those who have read the book and would like to understand more about coining, I can strongly recommend some 5* reads:
The excellent non-fictional tale
Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist
And (in my experience) one of the most intellectually stimulating series of novels ever written (for those who really want to understand the history of English politics, of money, of mathematics, of science)
Cryptonomicon
Quicksilver
The Confusion
The System of the World
February 28, 2018
3.5 stars
The Gallows Pole is a fictionalised account of the rise and fall of the Cragg Valley Coiners in 18th century Yorkshire. The sense of time and place conveyed by the author is absolutely superb - this is a very immersive book, and I enjoyed that about it. However, I think it was just a bit too...well...blokey for my tastes - kind of like historical fiction for bearded real ale drinkers. Women in this world existed only as receptacles for a man's seed, apparently. Oh, and to serve their ale, of course.
The Gallows Pole is a fictionalised account of the rise and fall of the Cragg Valley Coiners in 18th century Yorkshire. The sense of time and place conveyed by the author is absolutely superb - this is a very immersive book, and I enjoyed that about it. However, I think it was just a bit too...well...blokey for my tastes - kind of like historical fiction for bearded real ale drinkers. Women in this world existed only as receptacles for a man's seed, apparently. Oh, and to serve their ale, of course.
November 21, 2017
What a fascinating and grisly tale this is. Based on true events, The Gallows Pole tells the story of the Cragg Vale Coiners, a gang of forgers that operated in rural Yorkshire of the 18th century. Led by the formidable "King" David Hartley, this motley band of weavers and labourers soon found themselves the bearers of unimaginable wealth, while committing the biggest fraud in British history.
Mingled with the account of the Coiners' activities are excerpts of Hartley's memoir, composed from a jail cell. His words are poorly spelt and without grammar, yet easy to decipher. It becomes clear that he is a man convinced of his own greatness, with a hatred for the establishment and the well-heeled rulers down South. He understands that the machines and mills of the Industrial Age are on their way and that this will have negative consequences for his countrymen. We also learn that he is visited by visions of stag-headed men on the Yorkshire moors. But whatever about his delusions, he is feared and revered by his followers, and hailed as a generous leader that looks after his people.
Of course any anti-hero worth his salt must have a notable adversary on the side of the law, and this emerges in the form of William Deighton. An exciseman disgusted by the Coiners' contempt for the Crown, Deighton makes it his mission to bring Hartley to justice. And though King David has many loyal subjects, there are those who remain consumed by jealousy and greed, ready to burn his empire to the ground.
In a piece for The Quietus, Ben Myers revealed that he walked five miles a day through the West Yorkshire moors while writing this book. It paid off - his appreciation of nature and love of this wild landscape really shines through. A moment of woodland silence is broken "by the ruffled racket of a bird taking flight like a flung book." A heavy fog "draped itself over the trees so that only the tips of the tallest branches reached out from this dense vapour like the fingers of a drowning man." Autumn arrives "like a burning ghost ship on the landscape's tide to set the land alight. The fire of the trees' turning spread far across the flanks and the ravens took flight to the highest climes as leaves fell like flung bodies."
Before we go any further, a word of caution. I would not consider myself of a nervous disposition, but there are at least two scenes in this story that left me recoiling in complete horror. One deals with a blocked sewer, the other involves a roaring pub fire. The Coiners are a savage, fearless bunch and not to be trifled with - that is for certain. And this story is not for the faint of heart.
I came very close to awarding the full five stars but a couple of things held me back. The lack of a female point of view is a conspicuous absence - I would have appreciated learning the thoughts of Hartley's wife Grace, at the very least. And Myers has a tendency to repeat the full names of the Coiners, which can go on for several lines. I am not quite sure what this is intended to achieve and I soon began to skip over them.
But it would be wrong to dwell on minor issues. For The Gallows Pole is a book that deserves enormous praise - immersive, illuminating and absolutely compelling. It is a gripping, richly evocative story told with brutal beauty.
Mingled with the account of the Coiners' activities are excerpts of Hartley's memoir, composed from a jail cell. His words are poorly spelt and without grammar, yet easy to decipher. It becomes clear that he is a man convinced of his own greatness, with a hatred for the establishment and the well-heeled rulers down South. He understands that the machines and mills of the Industrial Age are on their way and that this will have negative consequences for his countrymen. We also learn that he is visited by visions of stag-headed men on the Yorkshire moors. But whatever about his delusions, he is feared and revered by his followers, and hailed as a generous leader that looks after his people.
Of course any anti-hero worth his salt must have a notable adversary on the side of the law, and this emerges in the form of William Deighton. An exciseman disgusted by the Coiners' contempt for the Crown, Deighton makes it his mission to bring Hartley to justice. And though King David has many loyal subjects, there are those who remain consumed by jealousy and greed, ready to burn his empire to the ground.
In a piece for The Quietus, Ben Myers revealed that he walked five miles a day through the West Yorkshire moors while writing this book. It paid off - his appreciation of nature and love of this wild landscape really shines through. A moment of woodland silence is broken "by the ruffled racket of a bird taking flight like a flung book." A heavy fog "draped itself over the trees so that only the tips of the tallest branches reached out from this dense vapour like the fingers of a drowning man." Autumn arrives "like a burning ghost ship on the landscape's tide to set the land alight. The fire of the trees' turning spread far across the flanks and the ravens took flight to the highest climes as leaves fell like flung bodies."
Before we go any further, a word of caution. I would not consider myself of a nervous disposition, but there are at least two scenes in this story that left me recoiling in complete horror. One deals with a blocked sewer, the other involves a roaring pub fire. The Coiners are a savage, fearless bunch and not to be trifled with - that is for certain. And this story is not for the faint of heart.
I came very close to awarding the full five stars but a couple of things held me back. The lack of a female point of view is a conspicuous absence - I would have appreciated learning the thoughts of Hartley's wife Grace, at the very least. And Myers has a tendency to repeat the full names of the Coiners, which can go on for several lines. I am not quite sure what this is intended to achieve and I soon began to skip over them.
But it would be wrong to dwell on minor issues. For The Gallows Pole is a book that deserves enormous praise - immersive, illuminating and absolutely compelling. It is a gripping, richly evocative story told with brutal beauty.
June 19, 2018
I hesitate to write a review for this book because I cannot do it justice. I want to say The Gallows Pole is lyrical, evocative, moving, haunting and memorable, but I have used these adjectives so many times to describe lesser books.
While reading this true story of the David Hartley and the Clagg Vale Coiners I could see the moors, hear the wind, feel the deep bone aching weariness of the hardworking men and women of 18th century Yorkshire. Benjamin Myers' prose took me out of my own environment and set me in Upper Calder Valley. I didn't want the book to end because I didn't want to leave the moors that Myers evoked.
The story is set in the late 18th century when the great mills started to be built around England. Life was hard for families of Yorkshire. Weaving, farming, iron work, making charcoal, building the stone walls that still wind through the country today took a painful toll on the body and after all their hard work people were still hungry and cold in lean months. When rumors of large tracts of land being sold and great mills being built that shut down the family looms and farms the people feared the loss of their freedom and their way of life, hard as it was. This was when David Hartley, with his brothers William and Issac, created their own cottage industry of coining-counterfeiting.
With a blend brutality and generosity they recruited a large group of men to work with them, and those that weren't involved kept the secret of the coiners and of their leader King David Hartley. For a few years the villages of the area were fed and warm, they had extra things and good clothes, money flowed. But the march of Capitalism will not be slowed and wealthy men will not be bested by poor men.
When a man of the Crown, William Deighton, an excise officer, discovers who the charismatic leader of the band of coiners is he vows to bring him to justice.
The story is engaging and moves at a good pace, but what makes this book so special is the character King David with his passion for his family, for the landscape, and his connection to the natural world. The character of visionary King David set against the character of moralistic William Deighton, also a family man who feels a strong, mystical connection to the moors he haunts every night, creates a gripping tension. Both men feel they are doing very important work, both feel strongly that they are protecting a way of life. King David is protecting a way of life that is being extinguished while Deighton is paving the way for the future. Both men are caught up in the magic and mystery of the moors and I too was swept up in the magic and mystery of the moors.
I cannot recommend this book strongly enough. It deserved more than 5 stars.
While reading this true story of the David Hartley and the Clagg Vale Coiners I could see the moors, hear the wind, feel the deep bone aching weariness of the hardworking men and women of 18th century Yorkshire. Benjamin Myers' prose took me out of my own environment and set me in Upper Calder Valley. I didn't want the book to end because I didn't want to leave the moors that Myers evoked.
The story is set in the late 18th century when the great mills started to be built around England. Life was hard for families of Yorkshire. Weaving, farming, iron work, making charcoal, building the stone walls that still wind through the country today took a painful toll on the body and after all their hard work people were still hungry and cold in lean months. When rumors of large tracts of land being sold and great mills being built that shut down the family looms and farms the people feared the loss of their freedom and their way of life, hard as it was. This was when David Hartley, with his brothers William and Issac, created their own cottage industry of coining-counterfeiting.
With a blend brutality and generosity they recruited a large group of men to work with them, and those that weren't involved kept the secret of the coiners and of their leader King David Hartley. For a few years the villages of the area were fed and warm, they had extra things and good clothes, money flowed. But the march of Capitalism will not be slowed and wealthy men will not be bested by poor men.
When a man of the Crown, William Deighton, an excise officer, discovers who the charismatic leader of the band of coiners is he vows to bring him to justice.
The story is engaging and moves at a good pace, but what makes this book so special is the character King David with his passion for his family, for the landscape, and his connection to the natural world. The character of visionary King David set against the character of moralistic William Deighton, also a family man who feels a strong, mystical connection to the moors he haunts every night, creates a gripping tension. Both men feel they are doing very important work, both feel strongly that they are protecting a way of life. King David is protecting a way of life that is being extinguished while Deighton is paving the way for the future. Both men are caught up in the magic and mystery of the moors and I too was swept up in the magic and mystery of the moors.
I cannot recommend this book strongly enough. It deserved more than 5 stars.
December 15, 2017
Now on the outstanding longlist for the 2017 Republic of Consciousness Prize for 'gorgeous prose and hardcore literary fiction' from small, independent presses.
Ben Myers’ The Gallows Pole certainly fits that bill, a story firmly rooted in the Yorkshire moors. Myers’s debut novel Pig Iron was winner of the inaugural Gordon Burn Prize – a prize awarded to novels which dare to enter history and interrogate the past...literature which challenges perceived notions of genre and makes us think again about just what it is that we are reading, but has chosen to remain with an independent publisher rather than adapt his work to more conventional tastes:
“I feel like as a writer, I’m from the margins, or the underground – a lot of my heroes and influences are people who are on the edge … so I think ‘why bother to chase [the big] publishers?’ (https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...)
The Gallows Pole tells the real-life story of “King” David Hartley, leader of the Cragg Vale Coiners in the 18th Century, who clipped gold coins and then produced forged coins with the clippings. Their activities were of sufficient economic import to come to the attention of Parliament and the London authorities, and Hartley’s life (and the novel) ended on the gallows.
Their approach, which, while considerably enriching themselves, enlisted the support of many (but not all) of the local populace is explained on the website http://www.yorkshirecoiners.com/, maintained by a present-day direct descendent of David Hartley:
The Cragg Vale Coiners would pay 22 Shillings for a full size coin (worth 21 shillings) and would then clip and shave up to forty Pence worth of gold from it before returning it to circulation for its face value of 21 Shillings. The lender themselves therefore gained a shilling as a result of the transaction whilst not actually being involved in the clipping. This helped to gain support locally and to conceal the activities of the Coiners, since nobody (except the excise collectors and the Government) suffered a loss and generally all involved made a small gain.
The Coiners would use the gold collected from about 7 or 8 genuine coins to create an imitation Portuguese Moidore, with a higher face value of 27 Shillings and feed this fake coin into circulation for its face value. They would only use about 22 Shillings worth of gold to create the fake, so making a substantial profit on each new coin they forged.
An 18th century Portuguese Moidore:
One of the coiners tools from the Heptonstall Museum:
Reviewers saw present-day political references, to Margaret Thatcher’s antagonism to the North, in Myers debut novel that the author himself had not consciously placed there but agreed could be present as a sub-conscious metaphor (https://afictionhabit.wordpress.com/2...).
And with The Gallows Pole there are again obvious parallels (implicit and perhaps sub-conscious) to Brexit and the 2017 general election and the rebellion against globalisation. The Coiners saw themselves as fighting - what even David Hartley realises is a losing battle - against the economic forces of the industrial revolution: see the quote that opens my review.
Whereas the authorities – represent by the solicitor Robert Parker (believed by some to be the real-life model for Bronte’s Heathcliff) and the exciseman William Deighton - see them as a regressive resistance to positive change. Deighton wants to:
He had been warned: the authoritarian grip was weakening and this way outright anarchy beckoned.
Myers has also worked as a freelance music journalist and for each of his novels constructs a playlist of songs and sounds that might shape the narrative. ... compiled as one would an imaginary soundtrack to a film adaptation of the work.
His playlist for this novel can be found at http://thequietus.com/articles/22559-..., including Leadbelly’s version of The Gallows Pole (itself an adaption of the traditional song ‘The Maid Freed From the Gallows’), from which the novel takes both its name and its epigraph, and, my favourite, Winterfylleth’s ‘The Divination Of Antiquity’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_F2Kf...), from a band that producepassionate, anthemic black metal inspired by the history, heritage and landscapes of England
Although the list excludes Chumbawumba’s ‘Snip, Snip, Snip’, directly inspired by the Coiners’ story (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeWiw...)
Pick a coin, any coin, and with a snip snip snip you turn a portuguese guinea to a threepenny bit; and every last watermark just curled up and died and now the king and the queen got a bit on the side. Don't be bloody silly keep away from bloody Billy cause he's shopping all the chopping going down along the valley, and supergrassing catches like a plague, to be sure, but it's nothing that a bullet in the belly couldn't cure.
There is also a related musicality to the novel itself, a deliberately dull repetitiveness, strongly reminiscent of David Peace (see e.g. my review of Red or Dead https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). Myers himself explains it perfectly:
I was aiming to achieve in the novel – a sort of haunted and ethereal earthiness, which draws on a limited vocabulary and heavy use of repetition. The Gallows Pole features the names of people and places repeated over and over again almost to absurd and annoying levels, in an attempt to induce a trance or evoke a rural reverie within the reader.
Yet at same time, when it comes to descriptions of natural surroundings – the weather, flora and fauna and people of the vale, the prose is beautifuly lyrical:
Perhaps one small weakness of the work was the lack of development of Hartley’s wife.
Unbeknownst to her husband she salts away some of the Coiners output to protect her family from the likely hard times ahead, and, in reality, she bought a new home (for a considerable sum in hard cash) after her husband’s execution and outlived him for 30 or more years. It would have been interesting to have seen into her thoughts, as she acts mostly in the novel as a rather passive observer.
But that is a small flaw – and indeed perhaps no flaw at all, since no novel is entirely comprehensive – in a fascinating work. A book deserving of wider attention and one I hope to see – as His Bloody Project did – featuring in awards.
Highly recommended.
Thanks to Bluemoose Books for the review copy.
So name your Gods lads. Honour them. Live amongst them. And always remember your place. Because England is changing. The wheels of industry turn ever onwards and the trees are falling still. Last week I did chance to meet a man down there in Cragg Vale who told me that soon this valley is to be invaded. He spoke of chimneys and waterways and told of work for those that wanted it, but work that pays a pittance and keeps you enslaved to those that make the money. This man - he told me that this land around us was soon no longer to be our land but that of those who want to reap and rape and bind those of us whose blood is in the sod.The independent publisher Bluemoose Books aims to deliver brilliant stories that have travelled from Hebden Bridge, across the border into Lancashire, down to London across to Moscow, Sofia and Budapest and into the United States, Australia, India, Colombia and Greenland, Iceland and Bosnia Herzevogina.
Ben Myers’ The Gallows Pole certainly fits that bill, a story firmly rooted in the Yorkshire moors. Myers’s debut novel Pig Iron was winner of the inaugural Gordon Burn Prize – a prize awarded to novels which dare to enter history and interrogate the past...literature which challenges perceived notions of genre and makes us think again about just what it is that we are reading, but has chosen to remain with an independent publisher rather than adapt his work to more conventional tastes:
“I feel like as a writer, I’m from the margins, or the underground – a lot of my heroes and influences are people who are on the edge … so I think ‘why bother to chase [the big] publishers?’ (https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...)
The Gallows Pole tells the real-life story of “King” David Hartley, leader of the Cragg Vale Coiners in the 18th Century, who clipped gold coins and then produced forged coins with the clippings. Their activities were of sufficient economic import to come to the attention of Parliament and the London authorities, and Hartley’s life (and the novel) ended on the gallows.
Their approach, which, while considerably enriching themselves, enlisted the support of many (but not all) of the local populace is explained on the website http://www.yorkshirecoiners.com/, maintained by a present-day direct descendent of David Hartley:
The Cragg Vale Coiners would pay 22 Shillings for a full size coin (worth 21 shillings) and would then clip and shave up to forty Pence worth of gold from it before returning it to circulation for its face value of 21 Shillings. The lender themselves therefore gained a shilling as a result of the transaction whilst not actually being involved in the clipping. This helped to gain support locally and to conceal the activities of the Coiners, since nobody (except the excise collectors and the Government) suffered a loss and generally all involved made a small gain.
The Coiners would use the gold collected from about 7 or 8 genuine coins to create an imitation Portuguese Moidore, with a higher face value of 27 Shillings and feed this fake coin into circulation for its face value. They would only use about 22 Shillings worth of gold to create the fake, so making a substantial profit on each new coin they forged.
An 18th century Portuguese Moidore:
One of the coiners tools from the Heptonstall Museum:
Reviewers saw present-day political references, to Margaret Thatcher’s antagonism to the North, in Myers debut novel that the author himself had not consciously placed there but agreed could be present as a sub-conscious metaphor (https://afictionhabit.wordpress.com/2...).
And with The Gallows Pole there are again obvious parallels (implicit and perhaps sub-conscious) to Brexit and the 2017 general election and the rebellion against globalisation. The Coiners saw themselves as fighting - what even David Hartley realises is a losing battle - against the economic forces of the industrial revolution: see the quote that opens my review.
Whereas the authorities – represent by the solicitor Robert Parker (believed by some to be the real-life model for Bronte’s Heathcliff) and the exciseman William Deighton - see them as a regressive resistance to positive change. Deighton wants to:
Send a message. A message to the hill folk. That times were changing. The empire expanding. That men earned money not made it; that a country ran on rules. Rules for everyone. Call it society. Call it civilisation. From the crown all the way down. Rules. Laws. Restrictions. The dark days were over. New ways were coming. Big ideas. Ideas that would change the world. Call it economy. Call it industry. Call it England.And on a 2nd read in December 2017, I could also see echoes of the current fad of cryptocurrencies, threatening to debase fiat money, and cryptoanarchy:
He had been warned: the authoritarian grip was weakening and this way outright anarchy beckoned.
Myers has also worked as a freelance music journalist and for each of his novels constructs a playlist of songs and sounds that might shape the narrative. ... compiled as one would an imaginary soundtrack to a film adaptation of the work.
His playlist for this novel can be found at http://thequietus.com/articles/22559-..., including Leadbelly’s version of The Gallows Pole (itself an adaption of the traditional song ‘The Maid Freed From the Gallows’), from which the novel takes both its name and its epigraph, and, my favourite, Winterfylleth’s ‘The Divination Of Antiquity’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_F2Kf...), from a band that producepassionate, anthemic black metal inspired by the history, heritage and landscapes of England
Although the list excludes Chumbawumba’s ‘Snip, Snip, Snip’, directly inspired by the Coiners’ story (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeWiw...)
Pick a coin, any coin, and with a snip snip snip you turn a portuguese guinea to a threepenny bit; and every last watermark just curled up and died and now the king and the queen got a bit on the side. Don't be bloody silly keep away from bloody Billy cause he's shopping all the chopping going down along the valley, and supergrassing catches like a plague, to be sure, but it's nothing that a bullet in the belly couldn't cure.
There is also a related musicality to the novel itself, a deliberately dull repetitiveness, strongly reminiscent of David Peace (see e.g. my review of Red or Dead https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). Myers himself explains it perfectly:
I was aiming to achieve in the novel – a sort of haunted and ethereal earthiness, which draws on a limited vocabulary and heavy use of repetition. The Gallows Pole features the names of people and places repeated over and over again almost to absurd and annoying levels, in an attempt to induce a trance or evoke a rural reverie within the reader.
Yet at same time, when it comes to descriptions of natural surroundings – the weather, flora and fauna and people of the vale, the prose is beautifuly lyrical:
The rain fell like the filings of a milled guinea bit onto a folded piece of paper.And describing the “supergrasses” (pace Chumbawumba) who eventually brought down the Coiners:
All his life Joseph ‘Belch’ Broadbent had been shrouded in smoke. Years tending the charcoal clamp meant it flavoured not just his clothes and hair with the slow dampened burn of oak and willow and alder, nor merely tanned his skin with soot and blackened dirt, but was within him; it had smoked him from the inside out and left Belch Broadbent with rheumy lidded eyes and a hacking cough that rattled most violently in the early hours.The Guardian has already made the comparison that The Gallows Pole might be 2017’s His Bloody Project, but in my view it is much much better than that. A notable point of comparison is that both feature excerpts of a condemned-cell confession but whereas HBP’s version was unrealistically literate (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), King David Hartley’s thoughts are written in a sort of pidgin English that reads oddly but works if read aloud (rather reminiscent of Paul Kingsnorth’s The Wake, another Gordon Burn Prize winner), and give insight into his motivations, both his self-importance but also his doubts, and his rather delusional visions of the stag-men
James Broadbent walked towards the distant rising plume that marked his father’s position as if it were a swarm of wasps leaving its fissure of an arid woodland floor or curl of a crawling tree root.
[…]
The earth was in his father’s scalp and his stubble. It had become him. His body hosted smoke. It was stirred into his essence to dilute that which made him human so that he was now part of the landscape and part of the fire; he was made of the smoke that billowed and rolled and tumbled during the slow process that took felled timber through combustion to become the shards and clots of carbon that fuelled fires and furnaces the length and breadth of Calderdale. He was wood-smoke manifest; man as a settled miasma. A nebulous fellow, burnt brume in stout boots, with a clay pipe clicking between what remained of his teeth.
I saw them. Stag-headed men dancing at on the moor at midnight, nostrils flared and steam rising.Both the narrative tension and the perspective of the novel are at the micro-level in the enclosed world of the moors and particularly in the thoughts and actions of Hartley. We hear allusions to the impact of the debasement of the coin of the realm on the wider economy, but this largely happens off-page. And both the title of the novel and the fatalistic attitude of the Hartleys leave us in little doubt where the story will end: even the identity of their ultimate betrayer is pretty clear from the opening pages (hence lack of any spoiler alerts in my review).
Perhaps one small weakness of the work was the lack of development of Hartley’s wife.
Unbeknownst to her husband she salts away some of the Coiners output to protect her family from the likely hard times ahead, and, in reality, she bought a new home (for a considerable sum in hard cash) after her husband’s execution and outlived him for 30 or more years. It would have been interesting to have seen into her thoughts, as she acts mostly in the novel as a rather passive observer.
But that is a small flaw – and indeed perhaps no flaw at all, since no novel is entirely comprehensive – in a fascinating work. A book deserving of wider attention and one I hope to see – as His Bloody Project did – featuring in awards.
Highly recommended.
Thanks to Bluemoose Books for the review copy.
August 10, 2023
A dark, moody, atmospheric novel about the infamous Cragg Vale Coiners, a gang of coin-clippers who operated on the remote Yorkshire Moors in the eighteenth century.
This is all about tone – a modern folk-gothic which relies on the eeriness of the landscape, all peat hags and fosses and Imbolc moons, crows and hints of shadowy stag-men, the moor ‘a wet rag never fully wrung’.
Myers's vocabulary is somewhat anachronistic for the period, but prioritises geographical accuracy over temporal accuracy. It is full of craggy phrases and rough dialectalisms - ‘offcumdens’, ‘groughs’, ‘throddy’. Sometimes, his desire to set up a moody atmosphere leads him to try perhaps a bit too hard:
…The gold that paid for the house that Jack built! But in general it works well on a tonal level, bringing to mind quite a lot of other English rural weirdness, from PJ Harvey albums to Ben Wheatley films.
The shape of the story is a little strange to me. I would have liked more about how it all began, whereas this novel starts with David Hartley already the ‘King of the Coiners’ and just traces their inevitable downfall. It's also a very blokey story, full of men spitting, slapping each other on the back, and talking incessantly about each other's testicles. Gracie Hartley has more to say in the trailer for the Apple TV series than she does in the entire book, which is a shame.
With those caveats, I enjoyed this a lot as a mood piece. It's another good evocation of the strangeness, the oldness, and the violence, of the English countryside.
This is all about tone – a modern folk-gothic which relies on the eeriness of the landscape, all peat hags and fosses and Imbolc moons, crows and hints of shadowy stag-men, the moor ‘a wet rag never fully wrung’.
It took the stubborn scavengers and the stealthy to live up here. The cunning and the vicious. The solitary and the half-mad.
Myers's vocabulary is somewhat anachronistic for the period, but prioritises geographical accuracy over temporal accuracy. It is full of craggy phrases and rough dialectalisms - ‘offcumdens’, ‘groughs’, ‘throddy’. Sometimes, his desire to set up a moody atmosphere leads him to try perhaps a bit too hard:
He ran across the field, stumbling in holes. Holes that dotted the field. The field that would lay fallow and frozen over the coming months. The months of a winter already coming in on the autumn breeze. A breeze that rustled the stubby clusters of grass. Grass that fed the cows that made the milk. The milk that weaned the children of the valley. The valley that they said ran rich with gold.
…The gold that paid for the house that Jack built! But in general it works well on a tonal level, bringing to mind quite a lot of other English rural weirdness, from PJ Harvey albums to Ben Wheatley films.
The shape of the story is a little strange to me. I would have liked more about how it all began, whereas this novel starts with David Hartley already the ‘King of the Coiners’ and just traces their inevitable downfall. It's also a very blokey story, full of men spitting, slapping each other on the back, and talking incessantly about each other's testicles. Gracie Hartley has more to say in the trailer for the Apple TV series than she does in the entire book, which is a shame.
With those caveats, I enjoyed this a lot as a mood piece. It's another good evocation of the strangeness, the oldness, and the violence, of the English countryside.
August 23, 2018
It is a land where those in charge have no interest in you until you threaten their income and power, David Hartley is drawing together the local people to assist him in his master plan, coin clipping. He looks after those in need and is not afraid to crush opponents and as his power grows, he declares himself King. This fraud on an epic scale has been noted in London and excise men under the command of William Deighton are dispatched to ensure that justice is served and equilibrium is restored. Not everyone is happy in King David's court though, there are some who think that he is too greedy and has not given what they feel they are due. It is through these cracks in Hartley's organisation that Deighton begins to make his move. The power play between the self-proclaimed king and the Crown is set.
He listened to the sound of the water and the way it sang over the smoothed rocks of flint and grit. The way it danced down through the woods like a child.
This is the first of Benjamin Myers books that I have read and I first came across him and this book when Robert Macfarlane tweeted the very arresting cover. I had been meaning to read it for ages but my library had not got a copy on the shelf as it was always on loan. Myers has based this tale of rebellion in the West Riding area of Yorkshire on the true story of the Cragg Vale Coiners. He has written a thrilling historical tale with criminals, government men determined to enforce the law and the innocent people caught in the battle to control their way of life as the industrial revolution begins to bite This is a book that is deeply rooted in the landscape of the 1770's and what lifts this above other historical novels is the way he has captured the smells, sights, mud and hardship of just trying to make a living at that time. The prose is a delight to read, poetic, lyrical and visceral, it grips you and drags you into this tale. A brilliant book.
He listened to the sound of the water and the way it sang over the smoothed rocks of flint and grit. The way it danced down through the woods like a child.
This is the first of Benjamin Myers books that I have read and I first came across him and this book when Robert Macfarlane tweeted the very arresting cover. I had been meaning to read it for ages but my library had not got a copy on the shelf as it was always on loan. Myers has based this tale of rebellion in the West Riding area of Yorkshire on the true story of the Cragg Vale Coiners. He has written a thrilling historical tale with criminals, government men determined to enforce the law and the innocent people caught in the battle to control their way of life as the industrial revolution begins to bite This is a book that is deeply rooted in the landscape of the 1770's and what lifts this above other historical novels is the way he has captured the smells, sights, mud and hardship of just trying to make a living at that time. The prose is a delight to read, poetic, lyrical and visceral, it grips you and drags you into this tale. A brilliant book.
December 29, 2017
RE-READ AFTER ITS INCLUSION ON THE EXCELLENT REPUBLIC OF CONSCIOUSNESS LONG LIST
The Gallows Pole is published by Bluemoose Books, one of the UK's small, independent publishers. On its website, Bluemoose Books says it "...is an independent publisher based in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire. Kevin and Hetha Duffy started Bluemoose in 2006 and as a ‘family’ of readers and writers we’re passionate about the written word and stories."
If you are of a certain age, like me, The Gallows Pole is a song by Led Zeppelin in which a man pleads for the hangman to wait until his family arrives. Led Zeppelin re-imagined the folk song on which their version is based so that it ends with the man being hanged rather than being let off.
Myers’ book The Gallows Pole has been billed as 2017’s His Bloody Project which I sort of understand, except HBP was a work of complete fabrication whereas TGP is based on definite fact and is, like Led Zeppelin's song, a work of re-imagining rather than of imagination.
You can read a bit about the real Cragg Vale Coiners here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cragg_V...
http://www.yorkshirecoiners.com
The Coiners clipped the legitimate coins of the realm, re-milled their edges and put them back into circulation. They melted down the clippings and forged new coins. They did this, at least in their own minds, out of necessity, because they could not afford to put food on the table for themselves and their families. The book opens with a scene including a hanged man (hanged for theft, not coining, although coining was a capital offence) that sets the economic context:
Hunger then it was that had led this poor soul to the gallows steps – a hunger for warm meat rather than cold-blooded murder. Not greed but necessity.
It becomes clear that for many, as the coining operation grows, necessity is overtaken by greed. Human nature, huh!
Clearly, the powers that be are not happy that this is happening and send people to stop it. The book is the story of the rise of the coiners and the work of the authorities to stop them. If you read the historical documents first, you know where it is heading.
There are two distinct threads in the novel. The main story charts Myers' re-telling of the true tale of the Cragg Vale Coiners. This is then interspersed with excerpts from a fictional journal/autobiography written by David Hartley, the leader (“King") of the coiners. The two have very distinct narrative styles with the main story being written in a "normal" third-person narrative to which Myers adds some flourishes to make it sound more 18th century. This writing is often very poetic and powerful. The second is written in italics and without punctuation. It includes a lot of phonetic and inconsistent spelling along with what you might call "old-fashioned" spelling of words. For me, it was very reminiscent of The Wake, which was unfortunate because that book is set hundreds of years earlier and I kept getting my time periods confused!
You can get a good feel for both the main story style and the journal style from the first page of the book. The book opens with Hartley’s journal:
Bean as it is the first and lassed confeshun of Daevid Hartly at the time of his capcher and inprisament he shall wryt down the thorts and werds and lyfes idears of a man what rows to greytness A man called King by them that no him and them that feer him and them folk not yet borne but who will in hunnerds of callender yers cum to no his name and say his name and raymember his name and speek his name And sing his name also and carrie it on ther lyps to tell theare suns and dorters all about the magicul tayl of the greyt King Dayvid Hartley A farther a husban a leeder a forger a moorman of the hills an a pote of werds an deeds an a prowd clipper of coynes an jenruss naybur who lorks after his own kynde an is also a lejen.
And it immediately drops into prose that sets the scene for the way the main story will be told:
Soot and ash. Snot and spume.
Quag and sump and clotted moss.
Loam.
The boy left the river and the village behind him and he felt the valley narrow and tighten as he turned up the track and the trees curled in around him and over him. Pulled him in.
In to dell and dingle. Gulch and gully. Mulch and algae. England.
A lot of the writing is poetic. Myers makes use of repetition to build rhythm in his paragraphs. He also writes a lot of short sentences, many just two words paired for poetic and atmospheric effect.
I think Myers is at his best when writing about nature. This writing is evocative and atmospheric. It shows a keen appreciation of nature.
From high up in the slopes of the woods William Hartley could hear the raven’s croak, dry and throaty. Another one joined it in a slightly higher pitch. A nesting pair.
That reads like the author knows his wildlife.
The trouble is, most of his characters (men of little or no education) seem to talk with the same silver tongue. At one point, a child says:
Bell Hole belongs to the Hartleys, and the moor above it and the sheep and cows that graze them moors and the Hartleys own the sky above it too, and the kestrel and the hawk that hunt there and the hares that box there, and the clouds and the moon and the sun and everything that passes overhead.
This fits very well with the mood and tone of the book, but doesn’t sound like something a young person with no schooling would say.
I would like to have learned more about the personalities of the coiners. The main characters that we learn about are stereotypical baddies - nasty pieces of work. It’s strange, but a lot of the time I felt that I was reading a Western with a ruthless gang being hunted down by a good lawman. But in the north of England. As Mike Harding almost said (this ages me): It’s hard being a cowboy in Halifax. In addition, there are many occasions where we are presented with a list of names, almost like a meeting of the coiners committee that starts with listing the attendees. But almost all of these names never become anything more than just that (although we do at one point get a reasonably detailed physical description of many of them, but again, just as a list). And there is only one woman in the story which seems a bit odd.
In the end, I found this a slightly unsatisfying book. Myers is clearly a very talented writer and he has a way with words. But the spoken words of some of characters and the lack of development of other characters meant I finished the book somewhat disappointed. I wanted it to be more than it is and there wasn’t a compelling story or character that pulled me through (although there should have been because it’s a fascinating real life story and there’s even a museum about it if you visit the location). It was beautiful to read in places, but not gripping, and I think I was expecting gripping.
3.5 stars rounded down because it’s not a 4 star book for me.
My thanks to Bluemoose Books for a free copy of the ebook to read and review.
UPDATE: On reflection, the book has stayed with me far more than I expected, so I have decided the 3.5 stars should be rounded up not down.
FURTHER UPDATE: After a re-read, I've gone back to rounding down.
The Gallows Pole is published by Bluemoose Books, one of the UK's small, independent publishers. On its website, Bluemoose Books says it "...is an independent publisher based in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire. Kevin and Hetha Duffy started Bluemoose in 2006 and as a ‘family’ of readers and writers we’re passionate about the written word and stories."
If you are of a certain age, like me, The Gallows Pole is a song by Led Zeppelin in which a man pleads for the hangman to wait until his family arrives. Led Zeppelin re-imagined the folk song on which their version is based so that it ends with the man being hanged rather than being let off.
Myers’ book The Gallows Pole has been billed as 2017’s His Bloody Project which I sort of understand, except HBP was a work of complete fabrication whereas TGP is based on definite fact and is, like Led Zeppelin's song, a work of re-imagining rather than of imagination.
You can read a bit about the real Cragg Vale Coiners here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cragg_V...
http://www.yorkshirecoiners.com
The Coiners clipped the legitimate coins of the realm, re-milled their edges and put them back into circulation. They melted down the clippings and forged new coins. They did this, at least in their own minds, out of necessity, because they could not afford to put food on the table for themselves and their families. The book opens with a scene including a hanged man (hanged for theft, not coining, although coining was a capital offence) that sets the economic context:
Hunger then it was that had led this poor soul to the gallows steps – a hunger for warm meat rather than cold-blooded murder. Not greed but necessity.
It becomes clear that for many, as the coining operation grows, necessity is overtaken by greed. Human nature, huh!
Clearly, the powers that be are not happy that this is happening and send people to stop it. The book is the story of the rise of the coiners and the work of the authorities to stop them. If you read the historical documents first, you know where it is heading.
There are two distinct threads in the novel. The main story charts Myers' re-telling of the true tale of the Cragg Vale Coiners. This is then interspersed with excerpts from a fictional journal/autobiography written by David Hartley, the leader (“King") of the coiners. The two have very distinct narrative styles with the main story being written in a "normal" third-person narrative to which Myers adds some flourishes to make it sound more 18th century. This writing is often very poetic and powerful. The second is written in italics and without punctuation. It includes a lot of phonetic and inconsistent spelling along with what you might call "old-fashioned" spelling of words. For me, it was very reminiscent of The Wake, which was unfortunate because that book is set hundreds of years earlier and I kept getting my time periods confused!
You can get a good feel for both the main story style and the journal style from the first page of the book. The book opens with Hartley’s journal:
Bean as it is the first and lassed confeshun of Daevid Hartly at the time of his capcher and inprisament he shall wryt down the thorts and werds and lyfes idears of a man what rows to greytness A man called King by them that no him and them that feer him and them folk not yet borne but who will in hunnerds of callender yers cum to no his name and say his name and raymember his name and speek his name And sing his name also and carrie it on ther lyps to tell theare suns and dorters all about the magicul tayl of the greyt King Dayvid Hartley A farther a husban a leeder a forger a moorman of the hills an a pote of werds an deeds an a prowd clipper of coynes an jenruss naybur who lorks after his own kynde an is also a lejen.
And it immediately drops into prose that sets the scene for the way the main story will be told:
Soot and ash. Snot and spume.
Quag and sump and clotted moss.
Loam.
The boy left the river and the village behind him and he felt the valley narrow and tighten as he turned up the track and the trees curled in around him and over him. Pulled him in.
In to dell and dingle. Gulch and gully. Mulch and algae. England.
A lot of the writing is poetic. Myers makes use of repetition to build rhythm in his paragraphs. He also writes a lot of short sentences, many just two words paired for poetic and atmospheric effect.
I think Myers is at his best when writing about nature. This writing is evocative and atmospheric. It shows a keen appreciation of nature.
From high up in the slopes of the woods William Hartley could hear the raven’s croak, dry and throaty. Another one joined it in a slightly higher pitch. A nesting pair.
That reads like the author knows his wildlife.
The trouble is, most of his characters (men of little or no education) seem to talk with the same silver tongue. At one point, a child says:
Bell Hole belongs to the Hartleys, and the moor above it and the sheep and cows that graze them moors and the Hartleys own the sky above it too, and the kestrel and the hawk that hunt there and the hares that box there, and the clouds and the moon and the sun and everything that passes overhead.
This fits very well with the mood and tone of the book, but doesn’t sound like something a young person with no schooling would say.
I would like to have learned more about the personalities of the coiners. The main characters that we learn about are stereotypical baddies - nasty pieces of work. It’s strange, but a lot of the time I felt that I was reading a Western with a ruthless gang being hunted down by a good lawman. But in the north of England. As Mike Harding almost said (this ages me): It’s hard being a cowboy in Halifax. In addition, there are many occasions where we are presented with a list of names, almost like a meeting of the coiners committee that starts with listing the attendees. But almost all of these names never become anything more than just that (although we do at one point get a reasonably detailed physical description of many of them, but again, just as a list). And there is only one woman in the story which seems a bit odd.
In the end, I found this a slightly unsatisfying book. Myers is clearly a very talented writer and he has a way with words. But the spoken words of some of characters and the lack of development of other characters meant I finished the book somewhat disappointed. I wanted it to be more than it is and there wasn’t a compelling story or character that pulled me through (although there should have been because it’s a fascinating real life story and there’s even a museum about it if you visit the location). It was beautiful to read in places, but not gripping, and I think I was expecting gripping.
3.5 stars rounded down because it’s not a 4 star book for me.
My thanks to Bluemoose Books for a free copy of the ebook to read and review.
UPDATE: On reflection, the book has stayed with me far more than I expected, so I have decided the 3.5 stars should be rounded up not down.
FURTHER UPDATE: After a re-read, I've gone back to rounding down.
March 19, 2018
The Gallows Pole is one of the books long-listed for The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2018.
The book recounts events that took place in Calderdale, West Yorkshire, over a few years in the 1760s: the exploits of a gang known as the ‘Cragg Vale Coiners’. ‘Coining’ was the illegal practice of removing shavings of gold from the edges of genuine coins, milling the edges of those coins smooth again and then using the shavings to produce counterfeit coins.
The narrative is interspersed with excerpts from a document written in the first person using vernacular dialogue, eccentric spelling and very little punctuation. Its author is the so-called ’King’ of the coiners, David Hartley. It’s his jail cell testimony – not confession, mind you – he’s keen to point that out. Hartley recounts his first exposure to the coining process in the forges of The Black Country: ‘…What they done is smelt and pour and hammer and mould What they done is hoist and heft and scald and steam And what they done was learn us a new trayde a new way.’
The Gallows Pole transports the reader to a period when the first impact of industrialization and mechanisation was starting to be felt by residents of places like Calderdale. Power was becoming concentrated in the hands of landowners, of factory and mill owners and employment was taking the place of self-employment or small-scale agriculture. Old ways were coming into conflict with the forces of progress and modernity. For many ordinary people, their whole way of life was changing, not necessarily for the better (reminiscent in some ways of the modern day impact of globalisation). It’s not surprising that desperation and poverty should force some to look outside the law for the means to survive. Or, that men like Hartley, should reject the notion of change altogether. [Readers who dislike swearing should skip the next quotation.]
‘An he seys the day of the hand loom is over mass produckshun is cumin wether you lyke it or not aye mass produckshun and organysed laber is what I’m talkin abowt and if youv got any sens about yer yerll embrayce the new ways. And I says fuck the new ways and fuck the company and fuck your fucken scut with a rusted nyfe if yor still thinken on telling King David of Cragg Vale wer it is he can or cannit wander you soppybolickt daft doylem fiddler of beests.’
I think you may be starting to get a sense that creative use of language is a key element of this book. [Can I give a shoutout to the copy editors and proof-readers of the book at this point.] The author evocatively conjures up the atmosphere of the moors; its bleakness but also its harsh beauty. ‘Then when the downpour eased and the clouds passed over to slowly bank across the open moors in the direction of Haworth, the valley slopes were left with a fresh dusting of white, a patchwork of powdered shapes divided by the black streaks of stone walls that snaked over and around copses, hamlets and the top quarries…’
There is a rhythmic, almost poetic quality to the language with frequent use of alliteration and assonance: ‘In to dell and dingle. Gulch and gully.’ ‘From the dells and dales and dingles.’ ‘Slipping and sliding. Gasping and striding.’
Some of the prose is positively audacious – for its use of repetition:
‘Tom Spencer walked to Horsehold and folk there gave up their coin. Tom Spencer walked to Burnt Stubb and folk there gave up their coin. Tom Spencer walked to Boulder Clough and folk there gave up their coin. Tom Spencer walked to Midgley and folk there gave up their coin…’
And for the lists – sometimes long lists – of names and of places giving a sing-song quality to the writing.
‘Up they came and over they came and through they came. Many men.
Isaac Dewhurst and Absolom Butts.
Thomas Clayton and Benjamin Sutcliffe.
Abraham Lumb and Aloysius Smith and Nathan Horsfall and Matthew Hepworth and Joseph Gelder and Jonathan Bolton.
John Wilcox and Jonas Eastwood.
Fathers and brothers and sons and uncles. Up they came. And others too.’
The language at times is earthy and raw with visceral descriptions of bodily sensations and creative evocations of sights, sounds, smells, tastes. ‘Soot and ash. Snot and spume. Quag and sump and clotted moss.’
The story that unfolds is as compelling as the language. However, despite his criminal activity and the violence perpetrated by those around him, the reader is left with a sense of David Hartley as a tragic figure. He certainly becomes a folk hero in the eyes of the local community. That is, to those who don’t attempt to resist him, swindle him, usurp him or bring him to justice. Retribution is swift and violent for them.
There is a real sense of period atmosphere in The Gallows Pole, of a time when life was hard for many and death was an often close companion. It was definitely not the time or place to be a woman; relegated to the role of child bearer, provider of sexual pleasure (willingly or not) and household drudge. The only sign of tenderness is between Hartley and his wife, and even that is relative.
The Gallows Pole made a deep impression on me. The story was powerfully told and had a marvellous sense of authenticity. However, it was the imaginative writing that really drew me in. It may not turn out to be the closest to my heart of the books on the long-list but its author has certainly earned my admiration. I realise it’s early to be making predictions, especially as I haven’t read all the books on the long-list yet. Nevertheless, I’m going to stick my neck out and say I can see The Gallows Pole being the Days Without End of 2018. In other words, not only making the shortlist but possibly being the eventual winner. If I’m wrong, forget you read this. If it turns out I’m right, remember, you saw it here first.
The book recounts events that took place in Calderdale, West Yorkshire, over a few years in the 1760s: the exploits of a gang known as the ‘Cragg Vale Coiners’. ‘Coining’ was the illegal practice of removing shavings of gold from the edges of genuine coins, milling the edges of those coins smooth again and then using the shavings to produce counterfeit coins.
The narrative is interspersed with excerpts from a document written in the first person using vernacular dialogue, eccentric spelling and very little punctuation. Its author is the so-called ’King’ of the coiners, David Hartley. It’s his jail cell testimony – not confession, mind you – he’s keen to point that out. Hartley recounts his first exposure to the coining process in the forges of The Black Country: ‘…What they done is smelt and pour and hammer and mould What they done is hoist and heft and scald and steam And what they done was learn us a new trayde a new way.’
The Gallows Pole transports the reader to a period when the first impact of industrialization and mechanisation was starting to be felt by residents of places like Calderdale. Power was becoming concentrated in the hands of landowners, of factory and mill owners and employment was taking the place of self-employment or small-scale agriculture. Old ways were coming into conflict with the forces of progress and modernity. For many ordinary people, their whole way of life was changing, not necessarily for the better (reminiscent in some ways of the modern day impact of globalisation). It’s not surprising that desperation and poverty should force some to look outside the law for the means to survive. Or, that men like Hartley, should reject the notion of change altogether. [Readers who dislike swearing should skip the next quotation.]
‘An he seys the day of the hand loom is over mass produckshun is cumin wether you lyke it or not aye mass produckshun and organysed laber is what I’m talkin abowt and if youv got any sens about yer yerll embrayce the new ways. And I says fuck the new ways and fuck the company and fuck your fucken scut with a rusted nyfe if yor still thinken on telling King David of Cragg Vale wer it is he can or cannit wander you soppybolickt daft doylem fiddler of beests.’
I think you may be starting to get a sense that creative use of language is a key element of this book. [Can I give a shoutout to the copy editors and proof-readers of the book at this point.] The author evocatively conjures up the atmosphere of the moors; its bleakness but also its harsh beauty. ‘Then when the downpour eased and the clouds passed over to slowly bank across the open moors in the direction of Haworth, the valley slopes were left with a fresh dusting of white, a patchwork of powdered shapes divided by the black streaks of stone walls that snaked over and around copses, hamlets and the top quarries…’
There is a rhythmic, almost poetic quality to the language with frequent use of alliteration and assonance: ‘In to dell and dingle. Gulch and gully.’ ‘From the dells and dales and dingles.’ ‘Slipping and sliding. Gasping and striding.’
Some of the prose is positively audacious – for its use of repetition:
‘Tom Spencer walked to Horsehold and folk there gave up their coin. Tom Spencer walked to Burnt Stubb and folk there gave up their coin. Tom Spencer walked to Boulder Clough and folk there gave up their coin. Tom Spencer walked to Midgley and folk there gave up their coin…’
And for the lists – sometimes long lists – of names and of places giving a sing-song quality to the writing.
‘Up they came and over they came and through they came. Many men.
Isaac Dewhurst and Absolom Butts.
Thomas Clayton and Benjamin Sutcliffe.
Abraham Lumb and Aloysius Smith and Nathan Horsfall and Matthew Hepworth and Joseph Gelder and Jonathan Bolton.
John Wilcox and Jonas Eastwood.
Fathers and brothers and sons and uncles. Up they came. And others too.’
The language at times is earthy and raw with visceral descriptions of bodily sensations and creative evocations of sights, sounds, smells, tastes. ‘Soot and ash. Snot and spume. Quag and sump and clotted moss.’
The story that unfolds is as compelling as the language. However, despite his criminal activity and the violence perpetrated by those around him, the reader is left with a sense of David Hartley as a tragic figure. He certainly becomes a folk hero in the eyes of the local community. That is, to those who don’t attempt to resist him, swindle him, usurp him or bring him to justice. Retribution is swift and violent for them.
There is a real sense of period atmosphere in The Gallows Pole, of a time when life was hard for many and death was an often close companion. It was definitely not the time or place to be a woman; relegated to the role of child bearer, provider of sexual pleasure (willingly or not) and household drudge. The only sign of tenderness is between Hartley and his wife, and even that is relative.
The Gallows Pole made a deep impression on me. The story was powerfully told and had a marvellous sense of authenticity. However, it was the imaginative writing that really drew me in. It may not turn out to be the closest to my heart of the books on the long-list but its author has certainly earned my admiration. I realise it’s early to be making predictions, especially as I haven’t read all the books on the long-list yet. Nevertheless, I’m going to stick my neck out and say I can see The Gallows Pole being the Days Without End of 2018. In other words, not only making the shortlist but possibly being the eventual winner. If I’m wrong, forget you read this. If it turns out I’m right, remember, you saw it here first.
October 31, 2024
“All this clipping was his last chance - our last chance - to protect our little corner of the world and profit from it. To have our name writ in stone. Because the future of this valley is not for the likes of you and me. We are born free men; we are not to be enslaved, for that is what, surely beckons when the wheels of industry do grind onwards”. P323
Benjamin Myers has brought the story of the Cragg Vale Coiners to the 21st century in his amazing book, The Gallows Pole. What a brilliant read! I’m a fan of everything I have read of Myers and I love historical fiction, so the combo of both is a sure fire winner.
The Gallows Pole tells the story of ‘King’ David Hartley, leader of the Cragg Vale Coiners, a band of residents from the remote moorland above Mytholmroyd, West Yorkshire in the 1760s. Coining was a fine art of creating counterfeit coins, by ‘clipping’ real coins and using these pieces to create replica coins through a smelting process. Clearly this was no small operation, with a number of websites I looked at as I was reading the book indicating that the enterprise ultimately devalued the Pound by 9%, almost causing the British economy to collapse.
Set in the backdrop of the eve of the Industrial Revolution, the Coiners were the poor, who set to lose from the coming of machinery to take the place of the hand work of weavers and the like. In 18th century England when the divide between rich and poor was a divide not dissimilar to life and death, coining provided a means to live and to live comfortably.
“They knew too how most of their earth had been given away and those coins - his coins - had fed the starving of the Calder Valley for over two years; no widow or child or old-timer without work was left wanting. They had been clothed and fed and given hope, and that was more than any landowner or dignitary or lawmaker or mill-owner had done. It was more than the King of England himself had offered.” P 346
Ultimately however, coining was a criminal activity, punishable by death, and the hunting down of the Cragg Vale Coiners is actually a very sobering read.
Myers breathes the atmosphere of the Yorkshire moors into every page in this gritty historical narrative. The Hartley brothers are embedded in history - a band of Robin Hood and his merry men in a way who are in the historical archives for a lot of the right reasons imo.
Brilliant read. 5 gold coin stars.
Benjamin Myers has brought the story of the Cragg Vale Coiners to the 21st century in his amazing book, The Gallows Pole. What a brilliant read! I’m a fan of everything I have read of Myers and I love historical fiction, so the combo of both is a sure fire winner.
The Gallows Pole tells the story of ‘King’ David Hartley, leader of the Cragg Vale Coiners, a band of residents from the remote moorland above Mytholmroyd, West Yorkshire in the 1760s. Coining was a fine art of creating counterfeit coins, by ‘clipping’ real coins and using these pieces to create replica coins through a smelting process. Clearly this was no small operation, with a number of websites I looked at as I was reading the book indicating that the enterprise ultimately devalued the Pound by 9%, almost causing the British economy to collapse.
Set in the backdrop of the eve of the Industrial Revolution, the Coiners were the poor, who set to lose from the coming of machinery to take the place of the hand work of weavers and the like. In 18th century England when the divide between rich and poor was a divide not dissimilar to life and death, coining provided a means to live and to live comfortably.
“They knew too how most of their earth had been given away and those coins - his coins - had fed the starving of the Calder Valley for over two years; no widow or child or old-timer without work was left wanting. They had been clothed and fed and given hope, and that was more than any landowner or dignitary or lawmaker or mill-owner had done. It was more than the King of England himself had offered.” P 346
Ultimately however, coining was a criminal activity, punishable by death, and the hunting down of the Cragg Vale Coiners is actually a very sobering read.
Myers breathes the atmosphere of the Yorkshire moors into every page in this gritty historical narrative. The Hartley brothers are embedded in history - a band of Robin Hood and his merry men in a way who are in the historical archives for a lot of the right reasons imo.
Brilliant read. 5 gold coin stars.
March 14, 2019
A friend surprised me with a copy of this in the mail. I've been waiting a good year in anticipation of reading it and my expectations were relatively high (which is usually a recipe for disaster/disappointment). But I would read this again solely for Myers's prose--his sense of rhythm, command of dialect, and ability to immerse the reader in such a visceral time and place were delightful.
The specter of an industrialized future hangs over the moors as Myers turns the Cragg Vale Coiners into vulgar anti-heroes. Imagine if Robin Hood was a dirty, lusty, violent, greedy criminal who happened to help out some of his neighbors while fighting the powers that be. It's a gripping and relentless tale that hums along lyrically in Myers hands.
As other reviews have already stated, this one drips with testosterone to the point of almost entirely dismissing any female perspective or agency. While I wish that were otherwise, I did marvel at Myers style and was fascinated by the king in the wood's tale.
The specter of an industrialized future hangs over the moors as Myers turns the Cragg Vale Coiners into vulgar anti-heroes. Imagine if Robin Hood was a dirty, lusty, violent, greedy criminal who happened to help out some of his neighbors while fighting the powers that be. It's a gripping and relentless tale that hums along lyrically in Myers hands.
As other reviews have already stated, this one drips with testosterone to the point of almost entirely dismissing any female perspective or agency. While I wish that were otherwise, I did marvel at Myers style and was fascinated by the king in the wood's tale.
December 8, 2017
I thought this was extraordinary and perfectly pitched. I’m biased because this is set on my home turf and speaks straight to my sense of belonging, but it stands as amongst the most visceral and intense books of my year.
January 15, 2018
An excellent story, with prose that flows easily and convincingly.
A very impressive book that will hopefully get a wide reading audience.
Benjamin Myers won the Roger Deakin Award for The Gallows Pole. This is a literary prize that rewards writing about nature.
How strange it is that The Gallows Pole is also a story of human's (men) violence and barbarity. It's also a book that takes well known Yorkshire history from 1769/70 and blends in a fictionalised first hand account of those events.
The main protagonist is David Hartley. A legend in his lifetime; a man you would do well to stay on the right side of.
Hartley was no compromiser, he had significant trust issues, and he had no need to do his own dirty work.
As the anointed force behind the Cragg Valley Coiners, enough followers benefited from his brand of wealth distribution to secure his status as monarch of the region.
And region it is.
For those people in the South East of Britain still trying to work out the reasons for the majority 'Brexit' vote in 2016, this real life tale from 1770 provides some pointers:
"they do not give a f**k about us hill dwellers in their palaces down in London...."(247)
"Always remember your place. Because England is changing. The wheels of industry turn ever onwards and the trees are falling still."(41)
Benjamin Myers thanks his wife, in his acknowledgements and avows' special gratitude (she) suggested that perhaps this story needed telling'
The light that Myers has shined on this part of England two hundred and fifty years ago, means that I, for one, will definitely visit Heptonstall and the surrounding area next time I visit Yorkshire.
A very impressive book that will hopefully get a wide reading audience.
Benjamin Myers won the Roger Deakin Award for The Gallows Pole. This is a literary prize that rewards writing about nature.
How strange it is that The Gallows Pole is also a story of human's (men) violence and barbarity. It's also a book that takes well known Yorkshire history from 1769/70 and blends in a fictionalised first hand account of those events.
The main protagonist is David Hartley. A legend in his lifetime; a man you would do well to stay on the right side of.
Hartley was no compromiser, he had significant trust issues, and he had no need to do his own dirty work.
As the anointed force behind the Cragg Valley Coiners, enough followers benefited from his brand of wealth distribution to secure his status as monarch of the region.
And region it is.
For those people in the South East of Britain still trying to work out the reasons for the majority 'Brexit' vote in 2016, this real life tale from 1770 provides some pointers:
"they do not give a f**k about us hill dwellers in their palaces down in London...."(247)
"Always remember your place. Because England is changing. The wheels of industry turn ever onwards and the trees are falling still."(41)
Benjamin Myers thanks his wife, in his acknowledgements and avows' special gratitude (she) suggested that perhaps this story needed telling'
The light that Myers has shined on this part of England two hundred and fifty years ago, means that I, for one, will definitely visit Heptonstall and the surrounding area next time I visit Yorkshire.
October 11, 2018
THE GALLOWS POLE by Benjamin Myers.
My god, this is such a good book.
It tells the story of the Cragg Vale Coiners, a band of coin clippers on the Yorkshire moors in the late 18th century. In particular it tracks the rise and downfall of 'king' David Hartley, their leader, who developed the illegal forgery of coins, bringing wealth and happiness to the Calderdale valley, before the authorities took him down.
The writing just crackles with life. At times it's beautiful and mystical, at others it has the rhythm of a folk tale or a children's book (with added bad language and filth).
Wonderful book and, though I don't often get on very well with home-grown literature, this is the second British novel I have really loved this year (after The Assembly of the Severed Head).
My god, this is such a good book.
It tells the story of the Cragg Vale Coiners, a band of coin clippers on the Yorkshire moors in the late 18th century. In particular it tracks the rise and downfall of 'king' David Hartley, their leader, who developed the illegal forgery of coins, bringing wealth and happiness to the Calderdale valley, before the authorities took him down.
The writing just crackles with life. At times it's beautiful and mystical, at others it has the rhythm of a folk tale or a children's book (with added bad language and filth).
Wonderful book and, though I don't often get on very well with home-grown literature, this is the second British novel I have really loved this year (after The Assembly of the Severed Head).
January 18, 2018
Were the Cragg Vale Coiners heroes who fed the Yorkshire poor and fought the greedy Crown? Were they criminals who, by forging coins, ruined honest merchants and threatened the rule of law? Is the standoff between the high representatives of the state and the band of counterfeiters in the valley an allegory for the fight between freedom versus authority, the agrarian society versus industrialization, the past versus the future? Between these conceptual lines lies the wide territory that has the potential to turn this into a wonderfully ambiguous, irritating novel.
Benjamin Myers took the true story of the 18th century Yorkshire Coiners - poor workers who illegally forged coins, a crime punishable with death by hanging - that has already been elevated to the status of a legend and transforms it into a myth. Although written in modern English, Myers applies his language in an inventive mixture of folktale, biblical tale, poems, songs, and the imitation of oral history – especially the descriptions of nature are extremely well done (and Myers truly deserves the Roger Deakin Award he received for this). The coiners' gang leader, David Hartley, sees fantastical creatures and is possessed by a sense of pagan providence, while the whole story is heavy on quasi-philosophical reasonings regarding the justification for the actions of both the coiners and the lawmen chasing them.
Envisioning a novel as the rendering of a myth certainly is an interesting idea, but this idea is not consistently well executed, especially in the last quarter of the text. While until then, the author does a pretty good job describing the ambiguities of the story – the gruesome, murderous methods of the coiners, but also their feeling of abandonment and alienation from the ruling classes as well as their fear regarding the dawn of industrialization – Myers now really indulges in the self-righteous justifications of David Hartley and his gang. Concepts get truly muddy, and we have to read sentences like:
- (When a volunteer force to hunt the coiners is created) “For this was the biggest mobilization of coordinated authoritarian force the town had seen, (…).” How can such a mob be an authoritarian force? Later, Myers lets Hartley look down upon men who choose “authority over freedom” – Somebody define authority/authoritarianism for Mr. Myers, please (spoiler alert: Ironically, David Hartley’s rule does in fact qualify as authoritarian, which is an underexplored, highly interesting aspect of the story).
- “(…) his coins had fed the starving of the Calder Valley for over two years; no widow or child or old-timer without work was left wanting. They had been clothed and fed and given hope, and that was more than any landowner or dignitary or law-maker or mill-owner had done. It was more too than the King of England himself had offered.” Relax, Myers, ‘tis too much.
- “We are born free men; we are not to be enslaved; for this is what surely beckons when the wheels of industry do grind onwards.” Seriously: Too much. This last quarter destroys the degree of nuance Myers build before that, the nuance that renders this story more interesting. In the light of the janus-headed nature of this gang (poor, proud, afraid and desperately trying to secure a future for their families, but also violent and murderous), these saint-like descriptions are a little silly. (Btw: The parallels between the reasons for Brexit and the reasoning of the coiners that some people see can also only be drawn if you compare the narrative framing, not actual realities).
Apart from the issues I tried to explain above, this is certainly an interesting read, even if some parts could have been clipped (haha, sorry) to make the writing more concise.
Thanks a lot to fellow Goodreader Gumble, who was so kind to send me a copy of this book! Oh, and as an aside: All the dog aficionados out there (like Gumble and me) will have followed the destiny of the terrier that features in this story. While Yorkshire terriers were originally dogs owned by the rural working class, especially by weavers, they were later used to catch rats in Yorkshire’s clothing mills – I found Myers idea to throw in a domesticated animal that, in its own way, has to adapt to changing historical circumstances, really clever.
Benjamin Myers took the true story of the 18th century Yorkshire Coiners - poor workers who illegally forged coins, a crime punishable with death by hanging - that has already been elevated to the status of a legend and transforms it into a myth. Although written in modern English, Myers applies his language in an inventive mixture of folktale, biblical tale, poems, songs, and the imitation of oral history – especially the descriptions of nature are extremely well done (and Myers truly deserves the Roger Deakin Award he received for this). The coiners' gang leader, David Hartley, sees fantastical creatures and is possessed by a sense of pagan providence, while the whole story is heavy on quasi-philosophical reasonings regarding the justification for the actions of both the coiners and the lawmen chasing them.
Envisioning a novel as the rendering of a myth certainly is an interesting idea, but this idea is not consistently well executed, especially in the last quarter of the text. While until then, the author does a pretty good job describing the ambiguities of the story – the gruesome, murderous methods of the coiners, but also their feeling of abandonment and alienation from the ruling classes as well as their fear regarding the dawn of industrialization – Myers now really indulges in the self-righteous justifications of David Hartley and his gang. Concepts get truly muddy, and we have to read sentences like:
- (When a volunteer force to hunt the coiners is created) “For this was the biggest mobilization of coordinated authoritarian force the town had seen, (…).” How can such a mob be an authoritarian force? Later, Myers lets Hartley look down upon men who choose “authority over freedom” – Somebody define authority/authoritarianism for Mr. Myers, please (spoiler alert: Ironically, David Hartley’s rule does in fact qualify as authoritarian, which is an underexplored, highly interesting aspect of the story).
- “(…) his coins had fed the starving of the Calder Valley for over two years; no widow or child or old-timer without work was left wanting. They had been clothed and fed and given hope, and that was more than any landowner or dignitary or law-maker or mill-owner had done. It was more too than the King of England himself had offered.” Relax, Myers, ‘tis too much.
- “We are born free men; we are not to be enslaved; for this is what surely beckons when the wheels of industry do grind onwards.” Seriously: Too much. This last quarter destroys the degree of nuance Myers build before that, the nuance that renders this story more interesting. In the light of the janus-headed nature of this gang (poor, proud, afraid and desperately trying to secure a future for their families, but also violent and murderous), these saint-like descriptions are a little silly. (Btw: The parallels between the reasons for Brexit and the reasoning of the coiners that some people see can also only be drawn if you compare the narrative framing, not actual realities).
Apart from the issues I tried to explain above, this is certainly an interesting read, even if some parts could have been clipped (haha, sorry) to make the writing more concise.
Thanks a lot to fellow Goodreader Gumble, who was so kind to send me a copy of this book! Oh, and as an aside: All the dog aficionados out there (like Gumble and me) will have followed the destiny of the terrier that features in this story. While Yorkshire terriers were originally dogs owned by the rural working class, especially by weavers, they were later used to catch rats in Yorkshire’s clothing mills – I found Myers idea to throw in a domesticated animal that, in its own way, has to adapt to changing historical circumstances, really clever.
February 9, 2018
The Gallows Pole - Benjamin Myers
I have been reading plenty of books from outside these shores recently so it was a real pleasure to enjoy something so much that is practically from our backyard; West Yorkshire and Cumbria. Certainly Benjamin Myers is one of our upcoming young authors. Amongst his novels so far, Beastings (a young woman with an infant on the being chased across the wilds of Cumbria), and a dark series of two detective novels set in the same valley as this book and also in the 18th century.
This novel, by a long way, is his best to date. It is about the Craig Valley Coiners, a group of Yorkshiremen from Calderdale who filed and clipped the edges of gold guinea coins for their profit. This website explains more www.yorkshirecoiners.com should you need. Myers’s novel, with impeccable research and observance of local colloquialisms, tells the story of how a particular group, whose operation is as much a protection racket as clipping, get on the wrong side of the law. These were hard-drinking, brutal and often lawless times also as the title suggests.
If a ‘north south’ divide is perceived in our times it seems far more evident then:
They do not give a fuck about us hill-dwellers in their palaces in London. They sleep under silk while we have only straw. They eat goose and pheasant while for years we sucked on pebbles. They gave five fires blazing while we burn green-wood.
There is plenty of action as you might expect, but a highlight also is Myers’s prose is his writing on the seasons, the weather and the countryside:
And the snow moved through the various stages towards an end purpose: first powder dry and bail-like, then young, aerated and playful, and then more complicated flakes fell and linked together like acrobats in flight. There was a panic to their spinning free-fall as the plunging temperatures drew them in. Settled, they became something vast and powerful.
The valley was beautiful and binding. A world of black and white. Of day and night. A world of binaries and oppositions.
Winter.
After last week’s dump of the white stuff I can concur, but hardly with such wonderful use of language.
He had come from Cumbria to work here and everything he had been told about this Pennine valley had so far proven to be true: that it rained constantly. That there was little sun and the moors were a strange and unending place like a dream you never wake up from, a landlocked sea to be feared.
Dare I say it, but it would make a great movie. I’m not advertising... but the ebook is on offer at 99p in the UK at present.
I have been reading plenty of books from outside these shores recently so it was a real pleasure to enjoy something so much that is practically from our backyard; West Yorkshire and Cumbria. Certainly Benjamin Myers is one of our upcoming young authors. Amongst his novels so far, Beastings (a young woman with an infant on the being chased across the wilds of Cumbria), and a dark series of two detective novels set in the same valley as this book and also in the 18th century.
This novel, by a long way, is his best to date. It is about the Craig Valley Coiners, a group of Yorkshiremen from Calderdale who filed and clipped the edges of gold guinea coins for their profit. This website explains more www.yorkshirecoiners.com should you need. Myers’s novel, with impeccable research and observance of local colloquialisms, tells the story of how a particular group, whose operation is as much a protection racket as clipping, get on the wrong side of the law. These were hard-drinking, brutal and often lawless times also as the title suggests.
If a ‘north south’ divide is perceived in our times it seems far more evident then:
They do not give a fuck about us hill-dwellers in their palaces in London. They sleep under silk while we have only straw. They eat goose and pheasant while for years we sucked on pebbles. They gave five fires blazing while we burn green-wood.
There is plenty of action as you might expect, but a highlight also is Myers’s prose is his writing on the seasons, the weather and the countryside:
And the snow moved through the various stages towards an end purpose: first powder dry and bail-like, then young, aerated and playful, and then more complicated flakes fell and linked together like acrobats in flight. There was a panic to their spinning free-fall as the plunging temperatures drew them in. Settled, they became something vast and powerful.
The valley was beautiful and binding. A world of black and white. Of day and night. A world of binaries and oppositions.
Winter.
After last week’s dump of the white stuff I can concur, but hardly with such wonderful use of language.
He had come from Cumbria to work here and everything he had been told about this Pennine valley had so far proven to be true: that it rained constantly. That there was little sun and the moors were a strange and unending place like a dream you never wake up from, a landlocked sea to be feared.
Dare I say it, but it would make a great movie. I’m not advertising... but the ebook is on offer at 99p in the UK at present.
February 16, 2023
As Kinge Dayvid hisself mite say Bluddy magnifisunt
July 17, 2017
The Gallows Pole, by Benjamin Myers, is a fictionalised story based on surviving accounts of true events from eighteenth century northern England. In a remote Yorkshire hamlet, on the cusp of the industrial revolution, a local man named David Hartley pronounces himself King. He leads a gang of weavers and land workers in an illegal enterprise that puts food on the tables and clothes on the backs of the poorest in his area at the expense of those who have sufficient. Hartley and his brothers talk of becoming Lords of the woods and moors which they believe belong to the likes of them. Unlike those who more regularly bear such titles, Hartley shares his ill gotten gains. Those who live in abject poverty have little regard for the aristocracy who treat them with disdain.
“Landowners who rarely walked the land […] who spent their days away paving turnpikes and building mills. Sinking canals and striking deals. Buying and selling. Traders. Sons of the empire, the aristocratic archtects of England’s new future. Men for whom too much was never enough.”
Hartley recognises that changes are ahead. He worked for a time in the Black Country and knows of the huge mills that will replace the hand looms still operating in basic homes such as his.
“soon this valley is to be invaded. He spoke of chimneys and waterways and told of work for those that wanted it, but work that pays a pittance and keeps you enslaved to those that make the money.”
An illegal practise had existed in the area for many years, the clipping and forging of coins. Through persuasion and coercion the Hartleys centralise and expand the scale of this operation, thereby disrupting the local economy. With many benefiting, loyalty is assured, until one man grows dissatisfied with his share. Jealous of Hartley’s growing comfort and power he approaches an excise officer, William Deighton, who is determined to bring down those now known widely as the Cragg Vale Coiners and their leader, King David.
Deighton and his friend, a successful young solicitor named Robert Parker, are unused to the base manners and smell of this turncoat, pondering if he deserves any better than the harsh life he leads. As well fed, regularly paid servants of the Crown they do not appreciate how the Coiners value their freedom, and know the land on which they and their forebears were raised. The Coiners are family men, even if they do treat their women as chattels, existing to satisfy men’s needs and provide children. The wealthy may be fatuous and condescending but they have the law on their side, and it exists to protect the lawmakers.
The writing is fluvial, reflecting the stark beauty of the land and the depths of the characters portrayed. The audacity of Hartley’s operation, the cunning with which it was perpetuated, is presented alongside acknowledgement that some suffered from his success. Yet he fed the hungry, cared for the needy, while the wealthy brought industry in the name of progress, costing forgotten lives and keeping the many in poverty. Had Hartley’s criminal activity continued, I wonder would his willingness to share.
A multi-layered account presenting the north and its people with vivid, brutal realism. Although historical, it is a tale for our own changing times. A prodigious, beguiling, utterly compelling literary achievement.
“Landowners who rarely walked the land […] who spent their days away paving turnpikes and building mills. Sinking canals and striking deals. Buying and selling. Traders. Sons of the empire, the aristocratic archtects of England’s new future. Men for whom too much was never enough.”
Hartley recognises that changes are ahead. He worked for a time in the Black Country and knows of the huge mills that will replace the hand looms still operating in basic homes such as his.
“soon this valley is to be invaded. He spoke of chimneys and waterways and told of work for those that wanted it, but work that pays a pittance and keeps you enslaved to those that make the money.”
An illegal practise had existed in the area for many years, the clipping and forging of coins. Through persuasion and coercion the Hartleys centralise and expand the scale of this operation, thereby disrupting the local economy. With many benefiting, loyalty is assured, until one man grows dissatisfied with his share. Jealous of Hartley’s growing comfort and power he approaches an excise officer, William Deighton, who is determined to bring down those now known widely as the Cragg Vale Coiners and their leader, King David.
Deighton and his friend, a successful young solicitor named Robert Parker, are unused to the base manners and smell of this turncoat, pondering if he deserves any better than the harsh life he leads. As well fed, regularly paid servants of the Crown they do not appreciate how the Coiners value their freedom, and know the land on which they and their forebears were raised. The Coiners are family men, even if they do treat their women as chattels, existing to satisfy men’s needs and provide children. The wealthy may be fatuous and condescending but they have the law on their side, and it exists to protect the lawmakers.
The writing is fluvial, reflecting the stark beauty of the land and the depths of the characters portrayed. The audacity of Hartley’s operation, the cunning with which it was perpetuated, is presented alongside acknowledgement that some suffered from his success. Yet he fed the hungry, cared for the needy, while the wealthy brought industry in the name of progress, costing forgotten lives and keeping the many in poverty. Had Hartley’s criminal activity continued, I wonder would his willingness to share.
A multi-layered account presenting the north and its people with vivid, brutal realism. Although historical, it is a tale for our own changing times. A prodigious, beguiling, utterly compelling literary achievement.
Shelved as 'wish-list'
June 2, 2017
July 14, 2017
The mood that the author created and maintained throughout the book was something special. I felt as though I was there on the moors in 1760s, because the writing was so descriptive and immersive. The book, however, was also a mixed bag for me at times, because the immersive power came more from the poetic quality of the text rather than the storyline itself. I was expecting more from the plot, so I had to adjust my expectations, but for me this book was all about the atmosphere. 3.5 stars rounded up.
June 8, 2023
Wow. I’m not sure what to say about this book. I started it, and really didn’t like it. It immediately gave me the creeps so I turned it upside down and put it at the bottom of my pile of books to read, and tried to forget about it. But something about kept nagging at me. I picked it up and tried to read it again. I think the fact the characters weren’t likeable didn’t draw me in straight away - I need to feel a connection. But then it happened, I made a connection, with the biggest character in the book - not King David, but the landscape and the weather. I really felt and experienced the bleak landscape and the ragged weather of the moors above the Calder Valley. The characters were still despicable, even though I shed a tear for some of them, and I shouldn’t have made this a bedtime book as it gave me a few weird nightmares. I can’t stop thinking about this book now I’ve finished it. I immediately want to head into coiners country and explore all these places.
UPDATE: 3 years later, this book is still one I think about often as it affected me so deeply. I finally ordered the beautiful map that Christopher Goddard designed and walked the route taking in all the places from the novel, up Bell Hole Woods onto Erringden Moor where we found Hartley’s pool and bodger’s bog, and up to Bell House itself and the Lumb Stone where King David gathered his band of clippers together. Took the book along with me and read relevant passages as I walked, and it really hit home how beautifully the landscape is written about in this novel.
UPDATE: 3 years later, this book is still one I think about often as it affected me so deeply. I finally ordered the beautiful map that Christopher Goddard designed and walked the route taking in all the places from the novel, up Bell Hole Woods onto Erringden Moor where we found Hartley’s pool and bodger’s bog, and up to Bell House itself and the Lumb Stone where King David gathered his band of clippers together. Took the book along with me and read relevant passages as I walked, and it really hit home how beautifully the landscape is written about in this novel.
May 20, 2019
4.5 A visceral tale of gold, greed, and betrayal set in the wild Yorkshire moors, based on historical accounts of a gang of 18th C. coin clippers and the men determined to bring them down. Myers writes of the moors in language vivid and, at times, breathtaking in its harsh poetry.
October 2, 2018
This is a long and ambitious novel, part crime thriller, part historic fiction, part folk horror thriller. Benjamin Myers should be applauded for pulling it off, what could have been a disaster is nothing short of a triumph in my opinion. His best work to date.
May 22, 2018
I admire this novel a lot, evocative language and an interesting historical event turned into fiction. Yet, admiration does not mean love. It is one of the best books I read this year, yet, I am not smitten with it, I admire it for its cleverness, structure, avoidance of cliches, the biblical feel and the way it brought Yorkshire of the 18th century alive. Yet somehow, it kept me too far at a distance at times.
Read
July 29, 2017I hope that the seven titles on this year's MBP longlist that I haven't read yet are as stimulating and well written as The Gallows Pole. Every bit as compelling as His Bloody Project, and, in its own way, equally as nuanced.
March 25, 2018
From the blurb (and that great cover) you'd think this was a dark, brooding, brutal book filled with the mystery and romance of its Yorkshire setting. A dynamic cast of rogues and personalities. In reality, it's an arduous, boring slog with little that's exciting or unpredictable. Like a movie where the pitch was great and the trailer makes it seem far more than it is.
Many reviews here say it is well-written, but I would say it's more confidently written. There are loads of gimmicks at play here. No speech marks (though kudos to Myers, it never gets confusing), phonetic spelling for the main character's journal entries, and more attempts at musicality through repetition than an amateur poetry jam:
The entire building came alive with the sound of scraping and banging and rattling and smashing and singing and shouting and braying and grinding and grating and crashing and clobbering and splintering and cleaving and burning and wresting and splashing and beating and clawing and shredding and shouting and splitting and screaming.
The writing (and length) wouldn't bother me if there was a really well-told story. I understand Myers was probably constrained by historical facts, but the plot is flat. It begins by revelling in the mean-spiritedness of some men who counterfeit coins, continues to reiterate this, and goes exactly where you expect it to. There are plenty of themes in the background - the hardships endured before the wealth brought to the valley, the idea of sticking it to the man, rural paganism, the impending industrial revolution - but Myers doesn't really explore them. He uses them like cardboard cutouts at a party, to make the book seem like more than it actually is, mentioning them briefly and obtusely before using up another fifty pages to tell you again what a mean bastard the main character is.
There's also this weird moral ambiguity that I suppose is meant to challenge the reader, but just felt a little cheap to me. Hartley and his gang terrorise and beat members of the community to get them to submit to him, kill innocents, and rule with an iron fist. Yet by the end of the book he is revered as a 'new King' and one of their own, with the real monarch's lawmen portrayed as people to be despised (because they submit the poor, kill them, and rule with an iron fist). It might be true, but there isn't enough emotional depth to make it believable in a fictional form. I could kind of come up with an explanation if I was willing to make excuses for this book, but the truth is there are critical pieces missing, and unless you're willing to fill them in yourself, the book just doesn't work.
Ultimately, this book frustrated me as it felt like it could have been so much more. Perhaps Myers was too respectful of his research to take the liberties needed with fiction, but it just doesn't live up to the hype for me.
Many reviews here say it is well-written, but I would say it's more confidently written. There are loads of gimmicks at play here. No speech marks (though kudos to Myers, it never gets confusing), phonetic spelling for the main character's journal entries, and more attempts at musicality through repetition than an amateur poetry jam:
The entire building came alive with the sound of scraping and banging and rattling and smashing and singing and shouting and braying and grinding and grating and crashing and clobbering and splintering and cleaving and burning and wresting and splashing and beating and clawing and shredding and shouting and splitting and screaming.
The writing (and length) wouldn't bother me if there was a really well-told story. I understand Myers was probably constrained by historical facts, but the plot is flat. It begins by revelling in the mean-spiritedness of some men who counterfeit coins, continues to reiterate this, and goes exactly where you expect it to. There are plenty of themes in the background - the hardships endured before the wealth brought to the valley, the idea of sticking it to the man, rural paganism, the impending industrial revolution - but Myers doesn't really explore them. He uses them like cardboard cutouts at a party, to make the book seem like more than it actually is, mentioning them briefly and obtusely before using up another fifty pages to tell you again what a mean bastard the main character is.
There's also this weird moral ambiguity that I suppose is meant to challenge the reader, but just felt a little cheap to me. Hartley and his gang terrorise and beat members of the community to get them to submit to him, kill innocents, and rule with an iron fist. Yet by the end of the book he is revered as a 'new King' and one of their own, with the real monarch's lawmen portrayed as people to be despised (because they submit the poor, kill them, and rule with an iron fist). It might be true, but there isn't enough emotional depth to make it believable in a fictional form. I could kind of come up with an explanation if I was willing to make excuses for this book, but the truth is there are critical pieces missing, and unless you're willing to fill them in yourself, the book just doesn't work.
Ultimately, this book frustrated me as it felt like it could have been so much more. Perhaps Myers was too respectful of his research to take the liberties needed with fiction, but it just doesn't live up to the hype for me.
February 26, 2018
Longlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize 2017. This is such a good historical novel about a common man, albeit an outlaw, in 1770s West Yorkshire known by the villagers as "King" David Hartley of the Cragg Vale Coiners or the Turvin Clippers. The poor inhabitants of this area made their trade in looming and farming and were struggling to feed and clothe their families. Outlaws, David Hartley, and his brothers turned to clipping coins and melting and forging new coins, flooding the economy with counterfeit money. The spoils were then used to purchase food and clothing that could be distributed to the valley people. David Hartley had a grandiose view of himself and was said to have visions. However, he was a sort of Robin Hood to his neighbors, taking from the people of means and giving to the poor. The practice of clipping coin had been going on for a long time, mainly due to England acknowledging the use of foreign currencies in the country. These coins were made to resemble Portuguese coins. However, the depleted economy soon brings the attention of the local tax and legal authorities in the neighboring Halifax. We see the devastation created by the coining.
During this same time period and place, the industrial revolution was ramping up in England with turnpikes being built as well as man-made waterways with water wheels to power factory mills. Children were working in these mills and factories and getting severely injured or killed. The mills' smokestacks were polluting the surrounding communities. The people in David Hartley's country were being threatened by the changing of times and naturally wanted to cling to their ways of looming and farming. David Hartley found himself hunted down as a result of a turncoat coiner fueled by the greed of a financial reward and a hatred of David Hartley. He was jailed and later hanged at Tyburn Hill and buried at St. Thomas a Beckett churchyard.
This novel does not romanticize the outlaw's case for coining or side with the authorities in their lawfulness but provides a story to be seen from all angles. There is brutality throughout the novel as the outlaws retaliate against the turncoats and some lawmen in attempt to prevent the disruption of their business. Alongside the chapters in the novel, there is a diary/memoirs being written by David Hartley from his cell in prison in an earlier form of English from his viewpoint.
It is evident by the References section at the end of the book that Benjamin Myers conducted a lot of research to write about this important time in history. This novel is unique in that it tells the true story of a common man in a time/place that deserves to be told.
During this same time period and place, the industrial revolution was ramping up in England with turnpikes being built as well as man-made waterways with water wheels to power factory mills. Children were working in these mills and factories and getting severely injured or killed. The mills' smokestacks were polluting the surrounding communities. The people in David Hartley's country were being threatened by the changing of times and naturally wanted to cling to their ways of looming and farming. David Hartley found himself hunted down as a result of a turncoat coiner fueled by the greed of a financial reward and a hatred of David Hartley. He was jailed and later hanged at Tyburn Hill and buried at St. Thomas a Beckett churchyard.
This novel does not romanticize the outlaw's case for coining or side with the authorities in their lawfulness but provides a story to be seen from all angles. There is brutality throughout the novel as the outlaws retaliate against the turncoats and some lawmen in attempt to prevent the disruption of their business. Alongside the chapters in the novel, there is a diary/memoirs being written by David Hartley from his cell in prison in an earlier form of English from his viewpoint.
It is evident by the References section at the end of the book that Benjamin Myers conducted a lot of research to write about this important time in history. This novel is unique in that it tells the true story of a common man in a time/place that deserves to be told.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 2, 2019
You know how people say don't judge a book by its cover? I think we actually all do that. Sometimes, I pick a book just because I fancy the cover, and have no idea what's inside. But when what's inside happens to be such a joyous, wonderfully written, stupendously atmospheric story - as is the case with The Gallows Pole - well, then, my mind gets happy. Myers is a very unsettling writer. He manages to lure you in and then shackle you to the bed before you've properly realized what he wants from you. As a non-native English speaker, it's not exactly been the easiest ride for me - thick accents are hard on the ear, let alone on the eye - but the payoff is incredible. It would have been a robbery to not write dialogue this way. For a curious reader, this ticks all the boxes: it feels like an indie movie but with a blockbuster budget, it takes a seat when nature is speaking and it manages to enthrall you with the rawness and viciousness of its world. A completely recommended read - and my favorite literary surprise of 2018.
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