A Constant Northern Star: Huddersfield writer Kate Myall's son leaves serialised copies of her novel in pubs years after her death
Reading a novel over a pint in the pub – to many that’s a perfect way to spend an afternoon.
But if you’re in Huddersfield, and have picked up the latest edition of a particular 19th century family saga, you will also be holding a local man’s tribute to his mother.
David Woodward has been working with six pubs in the area – The Grove, The Sportsman, The County, The Rat and Ratchet, The Kings Head and The Star Inn –where is leaving serialised chapters of his late mother Kate Myall’s novel A Constant Northern Star for punters to enjoy.
Kate wrote lots in later life and when she died, aged 90 in August 2019, David inherited her laptop.
"I started to go through it and hadn’t realised that she was quite as prolific as she was, and nor had I realised that she was actually very good,” says David, 69.
The novel follows two brothers from a fictional place in the North East – but one that is not far from where Kate was born in Heworth, Gateshead in May 1929 – taking us through their lives and across countries in the late 1800s. “It's a romance as well as being about late Victorian life in the North East of England and over in America,” David says. “It deals with all kinds of different issues, like racism, anti-Semitism and working class poverty.”
Having worked as a foodbank warehouse manager and reaching retirement age, but unsure what to do with his time, David remembered that he had “made a promise to her when she was alive that I would help her in getting a book published”.
His mother – who had worked in language development, teaching people to read and been at Huddersfield Technical College for many years – then suffered a prolonged illness, followed by her death, so the plan halted. He says there had been interest from publishers while she was alive but nothing came of it, and she didn’t want to self-publish. When he had first read the book, he thought its large scale – about 140,000 words - was ideal for serialisation.
"There's a few pubs that I’ve visited where people go in there with a book or a laptop, sit there and read. I thought, well, what about trying to put it into something which you could pick up each week and go with the pint? There's been some very, very good authors that have actually done this in the past.”
He started leaving latest editions in the pubs last year and is now producing about 40 copies a week, with each installment around about 6,000 words long, “just enough, I think, to drink a pint in, maybe get another one and finish it off,” he says. "It's worked incredibly well. There's an awful lot of people who have picked it up and started reading it and got involved with it.”
David, of Longroyd Bridge, who is married to wife Jodi, is now hoping that if the serialisation gains enough interest, publishers might come forward to posthumously release her book.
Latest chapters, Kate’s short stories and her poetry can be read at aconstantnorthernstar.com while feedback can be sent to [email protected]