A 1914 calculation showed that a miner was severely injured every two hours, and one killed every six hours. Coal mining is rapidly being forgotten and there are no longer any operational deep mines in the UK- in a few years the only signs that we ever had a mining industry will be the odd mining museum and the "half" winding wheels that are in place in some former Yorkshire mining villages. I grew up up in the South Wales valleys, with relatives and friends who worked in the mining industry .

Apparently Miller remains unaware of the obvious fact that Tzarist and Communist Russia and Communist China, Nazi Germany, and various empires around the world, including the indigenous ones she discusses, all mined extensively.Men hunched over many miles down below, their back scraping against the rocky walls above in darkness. Read more about the condition New: A new, unread, unused book in perfect condition with no missing or damaged pages. Coal meant that ships became faster and better protected than they had been previously (the coal itself sometimes stopped projectiles), though one drawback was that they needed to put in at coaling stations, which meant that their movements were more predictable to enemy ships and also that their crews spent more time ashore. He is also quizmaster on University Challenge, has written and presented television series such as Empire, The Victorians, Great Britain's Great War, and is the author of numerous articles for many publications . 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.

The narrative covers all this, as well as the push for nationalisation, then de-nationalisation when it was clear the industry was on its knees and the rise of mining Unions, in particular the NUM. Black Gold is 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 .

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 book is so very interesting, but the vanishing of the reader's voice at every subordinate clause is unbearable. Britain, he points out, would never have become the world’s first industrial superpower were it not for coal. A lucky few owned land, and by some fluke of the law therefore claimed possession of whatever lay beneath it.