In 1983, two university professors looked slightly bemused as they scanned the shelves of the South Wales Miners’ Library. One said to the other, ‘Do miners read Dickens?’ Hywel Francis, Labour Member of Parliament for Aberavon, and Siân Williams, librarian of the South Wales Miners’ Library at Swansea University, seek to answer that question and a little more besides in this special fortieth anniversary volume.
Chronicling the origins of the Library out of the remnants of the magnificent Workmen’s Institute libraries, once described as ‘the brains of the Coalfield’, this full-colour hardback charts the Library’s development over time to becoming a unique research and lifelong learning centre.
Hywel Francis is the Labour Member of Parliament for Aberavon. Siân Williams is the Librarian of the South Wales Miners’ Library at Swansea University.