Review:
Miner’s Day
by B.L. Coombes, illustrated by Isabel Alexander; edited with an introduction by Peter Wakelin From Planet 245
Huw Beynon
reviews
Miner’s Day
B.L. Coombes, illustrated by Isabel Alexander; edited with an introduction by Peter Wakelin
Parthian, £20
Bert Coombes spent his early life between the coal mines of south Wales and the farms of rural Herefordshire until, finally driven by rural poverty, he found work as a miner at the Empire colliery in the upper Neath valley. His autobiography, These Poor Hands, published in 1939, drew on the detail of his experiences there, underground. A more general account of mining communities followed in 1945, when Miner’s Day was published by Penguin. In this he was assisted by the gifted artist Isabel Alexander who, during 1943 and 1944, had spent an extended period in the Rhondda, staying in Tylorstown, and travelling through the Valleys. Poor herself (some of her drawings were created on the backs of wrapping paper) she entered the world of these communities producing graphic portraits, sketches and landscapes. In 1944 she joined up with Bert, spending a week in Cwmgwrach, making drawings of the local mines and people, ten of which were included in the new book.
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Huw Beynon is Emeritus Professor in Social Sciences at Cardiff University and author (with Ray Hudson) of The Shadow of the Mine: Coal and the End of Industrial Britain, published by Verso in 2021.
