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Writer and broadcaster Jeremy Paxman’s vivid and compelling social history of how coal 'made' Britain read by Adrian Scarborough.

Episode Five: The Last Days

Today when the inevitable decline of coal came, it was bitterly contested by the mining communities, by the trade unions and by strikers on the picket lines as governments turned their back on the miners to pursue cleaner energy. Margaret Thatcher’s legacy as Prime Minister is dominated by the violent clashes the police had with the striking miners and for the infamous Battle of Orgreave.

Jeremy Paxman goes to the heart of how coal shaped a nation and its painful end. As he himself writes, ‘one day we may forget it was ever there’.

In Black Gold Paxman explores the stories of the engineers and inventors, landowners, entrepreneurs and industrialists who saw the potential for innovation and wealth. For centuries it was the driving force behind our economy and trade and the preoccupation of politicians. It fuelled the industrial revolution producing everything from carriage wheels to needles, it warmed and lit the nation’s homes and powered our steam trains and ships.

Underpinning all of this and central to Paxman’s book is the history of the miners themselves who toiled in appalling conditions to hack the coal from the underground seams and the mining communities that formed around the pitheads. He also explores the terrible human cost of coal with the filthy, polluting air it produced as it burned and the inevitable and multiple accidents that happened to those working underground.

Abridged by Richard Hamilton and produced by Julian Wilkinson.