Black Gold: The History of How Coal Made Britain

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I've never read a book by Paxman before this illuminating history of coal and it's impact on the development of Great Britain and it's industrialization leading to Empire building.

This becomes a particular problem when they deal with what became, in many ways, the defining event for the NUM: the strike of 1984–5. Coal and the mining of it may be old-fashioned and something we prefer not to think about, but it mustn’t be forgotten. By not doing so, she unnecessarily makes Extraction Technologies seem a one-sided polemic instead of the scholarly critical text it is for the most part.It was a “place where you slept and ate, visited the doctor, fell in love, had your children and entertained yourself” … One day soon, Paxman says, we may forget it was ever there. In the end, coal was replaced by gas and oil, both with much better means of transportation and energy density. Furthermore, if those who decide the allocations of the real and unreal are cruel, mad or colossally wrong, what then?

Britain, he points out, would never have become the world’s first industrial superpower were it not for coal. Indeed, the opening tells the story of one of the UK's worst pit disasters, and such tales are liberally dispersed through the narrative (Gresford, Aberfan and, of course Senghenydd where the Universal Colliery killed 439 miners in the blink of an eye) showing the human cost of coal mining. At times, Paxman’s capacity to combine confident generalisation with vivid detail reminded me of A J P Taylor, though I suspect that this might be partly because some of his historical knowledge does, in fact, derive from Taylor’s work. I don't suppose I learnt any think new as I pretty much know the story but it fills in the gaps and details. Both mention the development of steam engines, their bringing forth coal from the earth, and the society, economics, politics, and culture they produced.

Paxman's book could hardly be more colourful, and I enjoyed each page enormously' DOMINIC SANDBROOK, SUNDAY TIMES 'Vividly told . Paxman's main argument in the political sections of the book is that coal mining was unproductive and unprofitable in the 20th century long before Thatcher came to power (the peak of coal production was in 1913 then never recovered from WWI) so it is hard to see how it could have survived to the present day anyway. Of course it altered working patterns and gave more hours for reading and new forms of leisure activity, assisted the growth of literacy and made it easier to organise trade unions in meeting after dusk. He is critical of Arthur Scargill while acknowledging that his claim that the government planned to close a great many pits - derided and disbelieved at the time including by Paxman- turned out to be completely true. He talks candidly about the many diseaters that have befallen the coal industry and paints miners as heroes of the land.

Worst of all, in many ways, was the Aberfan tragedy of 1966, when 116 schoolchildren lost their lives. Despite such a lack of broader knowledge of nineteenth-century history and her salting her pages with jargon, Miller has a great many interesting and informative things to say about the fiction she discusses. In this brilliant social history, Jeremy Paxman tells the story of coal mining in England, Scotland and Wales from Roman times, through the birth of steam power to war, nationalisation, pea-souper smogs, industrial strife and the picket lines of the Miner’s Strike. Undoubtedly a sterling effort at documenting the history of the coal industry and am glad I stuck with it despite a couple of hesitant moments when I was tempted to give up, just because of the sheer length of it. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions.Both in differing extents relate the story of coal to nineteenth- and twentieth-century British politics, particularly the importance of coal in the British empire. Or, in the blustery rhetoric of Lloyd George, appealing to striking miners during the First World War: “In peace and in war King Coal is the paramount Lord of industry.