I interpret literary form and genre as signals for habits of mind and ways of thinking about the world that have material causes as well as long-term effects” (2-3). The history spans the opening of the first coal mines and finishes with the decline of the industry. Their story is also central: the miners’ struggles for safety and status; the inseparability of mine and community; and their famous fight against decline; later tell the story of 20th century Britain.

Disjointed structure and surprisingly poor editing unfortunately damage what’s otherwise a very interesting and engaging popular history of coal mining and it’s impact on industry and empire in Britain.It was a world of "allotment associations, pigeon and poultry clubs, brass bands, choirs, youth organisations, whippet racing and eagerly contested giant-vegetable competitions" . 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.

The footnotes alone are worth reading and tell us, for example, that London’s remaining 1,300 gas lamps are tended by four lighters who travel on motorbikes. In addition to discussions of canonical works like Nostromo, Heart of Darkness, Sons and Lovers, The Mill on the Floss, and Hard Times, the book introduces us to Fanny Mayne’s Jane Rutherford: or, the Miners’s Strike, H. In the end, coal was replaced by gas and oil, both with much better means of transportation and energy density. As is quoted here, Heseltine opined that all he had done was shut down a dirty, dangerous industry and there is some truth to that I think. They exercised a powerful influence on the labour movement even, and perhaps especially, after they had left the mines.

He talks candidly about the many diseaters that have befallen the coal industry and paints miners as heroes of the land. The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) remained influential in mining areas after the pits had closed and it has sometimes made itself into a curator of memory. A rich seam of history … Coal made Britain top nation, but we don’t talk about it much … Much more than the story of an industry: it is a history of Britain from an unusual angle, vividly told, that throws new light on familiar features of our national landscape … Paxman’s fine narrative powers are at their best in his account of [miner’s strikes] … From its beginnings to its end, the industry that made our country what it is, for good and ill, was a brutal business.

He is noted for a forthright and abrasive interviewing style, particularly when interrogating politicians. Nonetheless, it provides a rousing finale to a vividly told and enjoyable book that throws new light on familiar features of our national landscape.Firstly the structure of the business, pointing out the many fingers in the pie, each adding to the cost of extraction and distribution, and how the frontline, those at the coal face, have been dreadfully treated over the years leading up the seemingly unthinkable demise of the business. When I was a child it was how we heated our home, but, hidden from view it also powered the British economy.