Forensically assembled, The Gallows Pole is a true story of resistance and a rarely told alternative history of the North. When an excise officer vows to bring them down and with the industrial age set to change the face of England forever, Hartley's empire begins to crumble. They are the Cragg Vale Coiners and their business is 'clipping' - the forging of coins, a treasonous offence punishable by death. The now iconic front cover was also designed by ARTONIX associates, designers of all Futurismo releases.įrom 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. Very highly recommended.Benjamin Myers, author and friend of the label, showcases his talents once again with his incredible novel The Gallows Pole - winner of the 2018 Walter Scott Prize and soon to be a six-part BBC TV series directed by Shane Meadows. An unsettling cover reminiscent of something unearthed from a 1970s thrift shop bin completes the unique experience of this book, which would be a standout in any genre, and is certainly a rare historical fiction gem. The looming threat of industrialization, the harshness of life on the moors, its lack of options, and the delineation of class all serve as elements of the whole: one Georgian machine, many moving parts. These third-person chapters alternate with appallingly spelled diary entries penned by an imprisoned Hartley he looks back at the road that brought him nigh (to the gallows pole), the “king’s” voice to explicate his story. All combines with authentic dialogue and more substantive sentence structures to give a sense of inevitable, propulsive momentum from the novel’s first lines to its last. The prose is astounding in the best of ways: alliteration abounds, there are repetitive lists that begin to feel almost like a poem or a song, evocative descriptions coupled and tripled (“Soot and ash. The characterization is so vivid that it overspreads the page with three-dimensional dynamism.
The sense of place (the Upper Calder Valley) is crafted with an exactitude seldom encountered. This novel, winner of the 2018 Walter Scott Prize, is uniformly excellent. William Deighton, an excise officer, is determined to bring down this band that debases the currency, ruins local businesses, strong-arms the valley’s few law-abiding citizens, and horrifically murders those who jeopardize their illegal enterprise. George III notwithstanding, there’s only one king in West Yorkshire: “King” David Hartley, leader of a local gang of “coiners.” A ragtag group of Hartley’s relatives, farmers, tradesmen, and vicious criminals, the Cragg Vale Coiners engage in the Yellow Trade: clipping bits off of coin edges, using these shavings to counterfeit new coins, and then spending both. 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.
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