The Northumbrian King, Oswald (reigned 635-642AD), was a warrior, evangelist, hunter and scholar. Martyred by Mercian pagans at the Battle of Maserfield, Oswald was immediately canonised by the acclaim of the people, his cult rapidly developing to rival George’s claim to be patron saint of the English. Oswald’s Book of Hours is a series of elegies and eulogies for Oswald redivivus, written in the voices of an unlikely band of northern subversives, including NUM leader Arthur Scargill, hermit Richard Rolle, brigand John Nevison, Catholic rebel Robert Aske – and Oswald himself. Brutal, provocative and thrillingly original, Oswald’s Book of Hours is an ambitious attempt to rehabilitate an organic English identity via an exploration of radical, pre-industrial and pre-reformation traditions, and a handbook of devotions for the exiled and expropriate English settled north of the Humber.
