Praise for Black Gold
‘[A] rich social history … Given coal’s image, a popular history might seem a foolhardy undertaking. Yet Paxman’s book could hardly be more colourful, and I enjoyed every page enormously … A mining community, as Paxman points out, was not just a place of dirt and danger. It was a “place where you slept and ate, visited the doctor, fell in love, had your children and entertained yourself”. It was a world of “allotment associations, pigeon and poultry clubs, brass bands, choirs, youth organisations, whippet racing and eagerly contested giant-vegetable competitions”. Within a few decades all this was gone. One day soon, Paxman says, we may forget it was ever there. 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 … Coal made Britain top nation, but we don’t talk about it much … 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 … 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. Paxman is determined that we should not forget it’
Emma Duncan, The Times
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