I self-published Mine to Die through Troubador in 2024. After I retired from the classroom in 2009, I became the writer determined to create books that read well and above all were worth reading.
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| The 'widow-maker' - using the rock drill in the Dolcoath mine, taken by J.C. Burrows in 1904 |
As I experienced and researched the consequences of the Coalition Government's policy of Austerity between 2010 and 2015, I was also planning and writing my first book which I called 'Deception'. This work was self-published through Troubador in 2016 under the title: The Road to Corbyn.
My next book - a biography of a remarkable artist, Jago Stone, who had spent his early life as a burglar and prisoner - was published by Unicorn in 2020. I became a pulped author very soon after the book went on sale; I had offended against copyright law in my ignorance. The publisher and I apologized to the complainant. My learning curve ....
Undaunted, I offered my take on the coronavirus pandemic in a well-received piece of history, science, politics and autobiography in Dying to Know (Troubador, 2022).
Two years later, Mine to Die (Troubador, 2024) saw the light of day and is still selling well in the Geevor Mine Shop, the Truro Museum and Gallery Book Shop, the Edge of the World Bookshop in Penzance, and the Bookseller in St Ives. By January of this year, around 250 copies had been sold and another fifty gifted to friends.
My next book, Soul Time, will be self-published, again through Troubador, in the spring of 2017.
Meanwhile, I have now gifted a copy of Mine to Die to the Marazion Quaker library. It has been written with a Quaker message. As the text says on p. 211: 'Let me be transparent. I am a Quaker socialist.'
Here below are extracts from some of the reviews of the book:
Bishop Dr Bill Musk
'Through the recorded experiences of youngish Cornish tin miners and their families, the reader is confronted with a dramatic illustration of Donovan's main thesis: In an economically and politically hierarchical society, profits are valued more than people ... The quotations are powerful; the naming of the frequently dead makes the records audible. Donovan's argument is sustained, angry at times, wistful at others.'
Professor John Reid
'This book successfully combines historical analysis with ethical enquiry. Should, Rob Donovan asks, profit-making be pursued at the expense of the safety and health of working people? That the healthy life of nineteenth-century Cornish tin-miners typically extended to only 28 years old, even
