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
if they avoided the underground disasters that were all too frequent, is just one of the telling pieces of evidence with which the author answers the question in the negative. It is an answer that, while in the first instance focused on Cornwall, also self-evidently has a much broader compass as we face up to a world in which inequality and climatic deterioration have become inseparable.'Alan Carter
Two things struck me throughout: your ability to handle rigorous academic, resource-based research with a strong personal almost passionate take without compromising the integrity and objectivity of the documentary sources - and then, impressively, the way in which the relationship between global and national events hit the everyday working lives of the Cornish miners and their families. This becomes a strong polemic against the artificial construct of unfettered capitalism where greed seems to win so consistently against the need and dignity of work. Fascinating accounts, well-recorded and interrogated.... often painful.... always illuminating.'
Dolcoath mine - circa 1834
Dr Julia Bush
Quite a tour de force on a fascinating subject, and of great interest to anyone who loves Cornwall. That's a lot of people! .... What a punchy, personal account of history - reflecting both your professional skills as a historian and your political/ethical passions.... I appreciated your ability to move seamlessly from the purely local to the wider national and even global scene - for example in your account of miners' migration, and in the chapter on the World Wars. But what I most enjoyed was your gripping accounts of local events which deserve to be better known and more respectfully remembered. Great chapters on two big mining disasters, and who could resist a cheer for the Camborne 'rioters'?'
Francis Edwards
Throughout the history of mining in Cornwall (and Donovan's focus is very much on the industrial heartlands of Camborne, Redruth and St Just), the health and wellbeing of the miners themselves is a secondary consideration of the mines' owners... Donovan, an experienced historian and writer living in St Ives, argues his case forcefully through elaborating on contemporary newspaper articles and snippets. Through this technique he creates a Victorian Cornwall groaning with disparities of wealth and living standards.'
Tehidy Park and House, Illogan, near Camborne - early 19th century - home of the Basset mine-owning family
Linda Camidge
This is a marvellous read - local history with a personal voice to add interest - even, I imagine, to people who have never even visited West Cornwall. Rob Donovan's prose style is direct, punchy and clear - a rare quality in the writing of serious local history... There is plenty of full-blooded emotion here, untainted by sentimentality or ancestor-worship... If you don't mind a forthright left-of-centre perspective, I think you'll love this book.'
Toni Carver
To set aside the romanticism and turn to the reality of how desperate things could get in the 'golden age' of Cornish mining, one could do no better than turn to Rob Donovan's latest book Mine to Die which claims to unearth the truth behind tragedies caused by neglect and indifference in the mining industry. And he does a thoroughly good job of it... An excellent addition to the library of anyone with an interest in the mining history of Cornwall, Mine to Die represents factual story-telling at its best, seen both through the eyes of the newspapers of the day and the author's own; a contemporary view with the benefit of scrupulous research.'
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