The Gallows Pole Paperback – May 17, 2017

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.

Beautiful and brutal. Myers maintains a total control of language throughout--I mean this as the highest praise.I probably don't have much to add to the accolades this book has already gotten, all of which I agree with, but I do want to mention how beautifully made the book is. The cover art on front, back, and spine is striking. I mean this is some seriously badass design work here. I love the idea of someone seeing this in a bookstore and being compelled to pick it up and leaf through it just by this book-as-beautiful-object quality alone.

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.

Sorry but I have absolutely no use for a book that has no quotation marks. Perhaps it was not the author's error but that of the editor and book designer. No matter, I closed the book after a pages of trying to determine who was saying what. For me, a "One" at the very best, but actually a "Zero".

Plenty of books can boast they're a good read; plenty more can boast they are a good read plus enlightening insight into true historical events. But VERY few books can enfold you into both quite the same way Benjamin Myers's superlative wordsmithery can. By the end of this fine read you'll feel England's coppery moor water coursing through you replete with two good(ish), albeit imperfect men's worlds colliding. I'm perplexed this 2018 #WalterScottPrize winner hasn't received more accolades. Call out to some of our top US book reviewers??: @NYTimesBooks @latimesfob @NPR @goodreads #bookreview

A book hasn’t brought me so close to its setting since Sarah Hall’s ‘Haweswater’. It is populated by characters who are deeply rooted in the windswept landscape of valleys and moors, and who feel themselves not only far removed from London but abandoned by the monarchy. Their leader David Hartley feels that they must look after their own and calls himself ‘king’. But this is not an unbiased telling of what is a true story. Myers shows Hartley as a man who has come to believe his own myth and who thinks he’s beyond the reach of the lawmakers. Neither does the author shy away from showing the damage done to the local economy by the practice of ‘clipping’ and devaluation of the coin of the realm - a practice so serious, it’s considered to be treason. The honest man who tries to bring Hartley and his coin clippers to justice is sympathetically portrayed. He too takes joy in the landscape he walks at night as he tries to catch the clippers in the act. In a place where strangers are not welcome, his presence is quickly detected. There’s a constant underlying threat of violence which spills over as Hartley’s men interpret (or misinterpret) his instructions. We know from the title where the book is heading, and yet the journey is no less enjoyable for this. Plus, for a reader like me who is also a keen walker, it is a joy to know there is a map to accompany the book!

I am a recent convert to the work of Benjamin Myers: The Offing is spectacularly good! Mr Myers' prose is absolutely immaculate and often spellbinding; intense and evocative. That said, and despite really wanting to, I simply could not engage with this book. The characters, the brutality and general unpleasantness surrounding this band of coin clippers left me stone cold.I appreciate that time and place were captured perfectly, with the harsh landscape fully reflected in the unforgiving nature of the protagonists. Brilliant, but just not for me.

I bought this book because I was enchanted by Benjamin Myers' The Offing, and especially by its lyrical writing. Although there are traces of this style in The Gallows Pole, which was written before The Offing, I was disappointed by some key aspects of this earlier book.The Gallows Pole recounts the true story of a gang of weavers and land-workers in the Cragg Valley in Yorkshire in the late 18th century who embezzle the Crown by clipping gold coins and using their fragments to mint new coins, a criminal activity then punishable by death.The “Cragg Valley Coiners” are led by “King” David Hartley and his brothers Isaac and William, a trio of unpleasant, illiterate, foul-mouthed and immoral individuals. The brothers exert considerable power over the Coiners, local villagers and townsfolk, either via their own nasty actions or by using accomplices to enforce compliance and silence. Many local people involved themselves willingly in the criminality, as they gain financially from them and the money assuages their destitute and hand-to-mouth existences, but some did so reluctantly.The Coiners’ activities come to the attention of a Halifax-based excise man, William Deighton, who seeks and gains assistance from a young aspiring solicitor, Robert Parker. Deighton offers a £100 reward for information that leads to the imprisonment of Coiners members, in particular of David Hartley: this entices a “traitor” called James Broadbent, a weak and alcoholic individual who is motivated by a combination of the monetary reward and his resentment at being excluded from the gang.The information given by Broadbent is incoherent and inconsistent, but it is enough to lead to the imprisonment of David Hartley and other gang members in York jail. In revenge, Isaac Hartley hires two uneducated labourers to murder William Deighton; just one of three brutal murders described in the book. One of these is extremely grisly, where an itinerant labourer is thrust into a pub fire and burnt alive.As with Benjamin Myers’ The Offing, the book contains some fine writing, but this was more than offset by the things I didn’t like:• The numerous unpleasant and unlikeable characters, especially the Hartley brothers and James Broadbent. At the end of the book, Myers attempts to make David Hartley a Robin Hood-like figure, but I felt he was just a horrendous criminal thug without any redeeming characteristics.• The 50-plus pages of deliberately misspelt text that pretends to be the illiterate thoughts of David Hartley. I soon started skipping over this, which had the advantage of getting me quicker to the end of the book! However, I did notice one instance, on page 61, where Myers forgot what he was supposed to be doing and spelt the word “animal” correctly, despite spelling it as “anymuls” on the previous page.• The excessive use of four-letter swearwords. Lowly countrymen and rural labourers will have probably used these words in the 18th century, but in my view the book’s usage was often excessive and unnecessary.I cannot recommend this book.

Been a long time since I've read such a brutal and yet brilliantly written book. It was recommended to me as I'd never heard of the author but live in the area where the story unfolded. Totally different from anything I've read before. Ignore the critics who moan about the lack of speech marks. After a while it really doesn't matter. And I loved trying to work out what Kind David was actually saying in his badly spelt Yorkshire dialect. Yes, brutal - sometimes I could hardly bear to read the words - but what terrible lives the poor, on the brink of the industrial revolution, lived around the Halifax and Huddersfield moorland. The author wrote beautifully, almost poetically and such a contrast to the terrible content of the story Would highly recommend. Off to find out his other work now!!

A brilliant book and very well written. I know the story well being a direct descendant of David Hartley, the lead character; and the way Ben describes the events and personalities captures them perfectly. I know all of the paces he describes and the real stories of the people involved and I can see what he writes in my mind. I've no doubt the coiners were rogues in the way they went about their business, but I also know that the locals supported them as they generated an extra source of income during what were very hard times. Well done Benjamin!