Out: 15th September 2022
ISBN: 978-1-8380915-4-5
Paperback: 40 pages (includes cover drawing by Iain Sharpe & x 17 b&w images)
Price: £6.50
Dimensions: 140mm x 2.5mm x 216mm
The politics of fuel laid bare…
Follow David Banning into the fractured terrain of Whitehaven via the Fylde coast and the chalky cliffs of East Sussex as he absorbs the mining history and industrial grandeur once associated with West Cumbria. Nearly 15 years ago a list scribbled down on the back of an old bingo flyer – given to him by his late father – highlighted the names of five coal miners from former West Cumberland towns. A family history that once pointed to a final adventure before the development of the Cumbrian Metallurgical Coal Project brought the empty hyperbole of modern day taglines and slogans more sharply into focus. Coal for Steel. Indigenous versus imported. A plan for jobs. Growing the economy and the much-trailed ‘levelling up’. The gradual dissolution of life drifts down into the silence between shadows…