A MINER'S LIFE.

Waikato Times, Volume 121, Issue 20269, 11 August 1937, Page 11

A MINER'S LIFE.

TOLD BY HIMSELF. A REMARKABLE BOOK. Mr G. A. W. Tomlinson is a Nottinghamshire coal miner who has been unemployed since 1932. He has been persuaded to tell his own story. “ Coal Miner,” preface by Arthur Bryant, is a enthralling and profoundly significant book. The author is an unconscious artist. He has a robust humour, a gift for exact description, and the heart of a poet. He writes about the flowers and trees and birds of Sherwood Forest, which he learned to love as a child, with a familiarity and intensity of feeling which would be surprising even in a trained naturalist. He has known hardship, and does not shrink from describing his experiences with complete realism. But poverty has not bitten into his heart nor restricted his understanding. The son of an ardent Socialist, he was himself a Socialist until the ‘‘vain repetitions” of his local mentors sowed , the beginning of doubt. Critical of Trade Unions. He is pungenily critical of trade union leadership as he has experienced it. His reasons, which he expresses with much clarity, appear to justify his state of disillusion. But this remarkable book is not written as a political testament. Mr Tomlinson’s conversion from Socialism to Conservatism is worthy of study, but its greater appeal lies in its revelation of a personality which no misfortunes have been able to crush.