by Mary Cullen

When I first went to Rome as a student of art history in the late 1960s, I took with me a copy of Georgina Masson’s Companion Guide to Rome, and a pass to access many of the city’s great art collections, including that of the Vatican.  It was a magical summer.

This summer I took a very different guide book on a visit to the Island of Lindisfarne and the Northumberland coast. Benjamin Myer’s Cuddy was my guide: an imaginative retelling of the story of St Cuthbert (‘Cuddy’), hermit and one time Bishop of Lindisfarne, and the people whose lives he touched down through the centuries.

The tale is told through poetry, prose, diary and historical accounts.  Book one begins with Cuthbert’s death on the remote island of Inner Farne in March, 687, to which he had retreated from Lindisfarne to live out the final years of his life.

Two seasons before the slow drama of my bodily demise,
I retreated to that rock after several years away
Fulfilling my duties to Him in service…
I sought a smaller island – an island off and island –
to be with mizzle and wind and Him and there we were.

Dr Mary Cullen is editor of Open House