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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 Three: The Power of Steam

In today’s episode coal is now the powerhouse that drives the nation. ‘Steam made speed paramount’ and ‘engineers were the new heroes of the age’. The first mainline railway opened in Britain and revolutionised transport. Even Queen Victoria made the train commute from Slough to London in record time. Steam also radically changed the navy as engines replaced sail. It was unparalleled as a fast and formidable force. But feeding the engines with their appetite for coal required a vast network of coaling stations around the world.

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.