CAILEAN MCBRIDE welcomes a refreshing and timely study of the way officialdom creates structures that exclude LGBT+ rights and humanity
Latest editorial
Brilliant oral history of the miners
STEVEN ANDREW is moved beyond words by a historical account of mining in Britain made from the words of the miners themselves
A picket, injured during clashes with police at the Orgreave Coking Plant near Rotherham, is helped away by his comrades.
The bard mourns the loss of comrades and troubadours, and looks for consolation with Black Country Jess
CHRIS MOSS relishes the painting and the life story of a self-taught working-class artist from Warrington
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a star-studded adaptation of Ibsen’s play that is devoid of believable humanity
GORDON PARSONS is fascinated by a unique dream journal collected by a Jewish journalist in Nazi Berlin
Borrowed Time: Lennon’s Last Decade, Parthenope, Where Dragons Live and Thunderbolts* reviewed by MICHAL BONCZA and MARIA DUARTE
CHRIS SEARLE wallows in an evening of high class improvised jazz, and recommends upcoming highlights in May
Mining Men: Britain’s last kings of the coalface
Emily P Webber, Chatto and Windus, £22
AS someone brought up in a mining family who has probably read more than his fair share of books about the history, politics and culture of Britain’s mining communities I expected, at best, to enjoy elements of this book and then to add it to the shelf of well-meaning but unremarkable texts about life in an industry that at the start of the twentieth century employed over 1.1 million but effectively no longer exists today.
It is all the more surprising that I read this book at one sitting, finding it nothing less than a fantastic journey through the life and times of British miners in the 20th century.
Webber is a historian who can write with the creative style, flair and passion of a novelist. Webber talked to hundreds of miners for this project and the book shows her to be a skilled interviewer and an excellent listener who subsequently produced a work that is sometimes sad, often serious and occasionally outrageously funny.
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