In Black and White: Comradeship, Violence, Danger and Triumph Through an Historic Century of Coal

2nd edition.  372pp, with a smattering of black and white illustrations.  Matte pictorial boards.  8vo.  Volume is neat, clean, bright and tight throughout. The county of Kent, in the south east of England, with its hopgardens, orchards and oasthouses is known as the garden of England.  In the late 1920s plans were drawn up to transform it into a new industrial Black Country of coalmines and ironworks.  Men starved of work during the Depression flocked to Kent, with their families, seeking jobs in the 18 new collieries promised by Neville Chamberlain - the man who was shortly to become Prime Minister.    The men settled in Kent, and stayed even when the collieries on England began to close down in the 1980s.  But lie any immigrants, many of them were strangers in an established community of folk who lived off the land rather than beneath it.  Peter Williams tells the unique story of a century of Kent coal.  It a story of love and hate, triumphs and crushing disappointments, team spirit and laughter, and conflict at the highest levels of government.