Not so long ago, our roads, buildings, gravestones and monuments were built from local rock, our cities were powered by coal from Welsh mines, and our lamps were lit with paraffin from Scottish shale. We live among the remnants of those times but for the most part our mines are gone, our buildings are no longer local, and the flow of stone travels east to west. Spurred on by the erasure of history and industry, Ted Nield journeyed across this buried landscape: from the small Welsh village where his mining ancestors were born and died, to Swansea, Aberdeen, East Lothian, Surrey and Dorset. Nield unearths the veins of coal, stone, oil, rock and clay that make up the country beneath our feet, exploring what the loss of kinship between past and present means for Britain and the rest of the world today.

Journeying across the British Isles and drawing on his own mining and stonemasonry background, geologist Ted Nield unearths the ways in which the rocks beneath our feet shape our lives

About the Author
TED NIELD holds a doctorate in geology and works for the Geological Society of London as Editor of the monthly magazine Geoscientist. He is a Fellow of the Geological Society and a member of the Meteoritical Society. He is the author of Supercontinent (2007) and Incoming! (2011). He lives in London.


Book Information
ISBN 9781847086723
Author Ted Nield
Format Paperback
Page Count 304
Imprint Granta Books
Publisher Granta Books
Weight(grams) 180g
Dimensions(mm) 200mm * 125mm * 20mm