Black Gold: The History of How Coal Made Britain

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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. And that is one of the telling points of the book - so much of this history is simply repeating itself today - as a society we just never learn but perhaps if there were more books like this that were widely read, especially but those of school age, we may start to think differently and see the societal shift that we desperately need. Both books have three sections, though this organization is more explicit in Miller, who discusses what she terms the provincial realist, adventure, and science-fiction novels. Some parts of the book were rather too political for my taste, but overall it was an interesting read.

In the brilliantly intelligent and attentive style of his bestselling book The English, Paxman here offers a fascinating exploration of British identity, social class and history. It repeatedly extended imperial power into territories south of Egypt and the Sudan, fearing for the safety of the canal. What could be more reassuringly familiar than the dense, smoky fogs of Sherlock Holmes’s London or the fact that the detective keeps his cigars in the coal scuttle? Failing to know the role of diamond mining in South Asia is perhaps a very minor point, but failure to understand the British Empire’s relation to Africa is more serious.Paxman also examines the role that coal played in the insustrial revolution and the military, economic and political importance of coal to the development of Britain. 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. The one criticism I will level at Paxman is that he's political views can sometimes become all too clear I think he should have taken a more neutral view at times. How much has neglecting “mineral substrata” actually distorted our reading of, say, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South, George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda, and Anthony Trollope’s The Way We Live Now? In the 1960s, under the Labour politician Alf Robens, the number of pits fell from nearly 700 to 292, and the number of miners was slashed, from 583,000 to 283,000.

A 1914 calculation showed that a miner was severely injured every two hours, and one killed every six hours. It is punctuated by accounts of those moments – usually a result of pit accidents or strikes – when miners attracted national attention. Paxman attempts to be balanced and fair (except when it comes to lawyers whom he refers to as the parasite's parasite, which on the whole is unfair except in the context of the example he gives), but he shows no real insights into the characters of the people involved and who made decisions which saved or decimated the industry. The majority of pages are undamaged with some creasing or tearing, and pencil underlining of text, but this is minimal. I was disappointed that there was virtually no mention of the technological advancements to clean up the coal burning industries - like electrostatic precipitators and scrubbers - and the effect they had.The two greatest industrial strikes of the 20th century - both detailed here - were both about coal.

Somehow , someway, I had a sneaking suspicion good ol' Paxo would find a way to take a dig at Trump in a book about coal in Britain. Almost all traces of coal-mining have vanished from Britain but with this brilliant history, Black Gold demonstrates just how much we owe to the black stuff. Paxman explains the role that coal-fuelled ships played in establishing the hegemony of the Royal Navy. His speech is slurred (I know he is ill), and he suffers the journalist fetish of EMPHASising random SYLLABLES as if this added MEANING to the prose (it doesn't). For all ebook purchases, you will be prompted to create an account or login with your existing HarperCollins username and password.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. But his book does a fine job of bringing it alive, and deserves the widest possible readership' Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times 'A rich seam of history .