Cave diver and photographer Martyn Farr has produced a tempting array of descriptions and photographs of 100 cave and mine sites. Hidden Realms aims to shine a light into some of the most alluring caves and mines in Great Britain and Ireland. One hundred sites have been chosen, in keeping with the recent vogue for…
A really good mining book comes along from time to time. Mike Moore reviews a newly-published volume on an important slate quarry in North Wales. Aberllefeni Slate Quarry – A history of the last underground slate working in Wales Jon Knowles, A4, Hardback, 280 printed pages, self published. Hen Dy Gwydyr, Penrhydeudraeth, Gwynedd LL48 6RD , ISBN…
In the summer of 2018, few people in the world with access to news reports could fail to have been gripped by the story of the 12 young boys from the Wild Boars football team and their coach, trapped by a sudden flood in the Tham Luang cave in Thailand. Floods in caves rarely end…
Caves turn up regularly in crime fiction, and this time it’s Scotland’s turn to see some speleological literary action. Karen Pirie, the main character in several books by Val McDermid, is a Detective Inspector in charge of investigating cold cases in Fife, eastern Scotland. In A Darker Domain, she is presented with a tempting scenario…
Alan Jeffreys dips into his bookshelf again to take a look at another caving classic. Back in the day when I was just starting out on a speleological career, seeking books from public libraries almost inevitably involved reading French authors. Although there was a smattering of British volumes, most of them dated from the turn…
Naughty boys, grand follies, an underground control centre for a railway and a Quaker congregation falling through the floor into the cellar … Peter Burgess gets to explore Dorking below the surface in a book that went underground in his own house for a while! It is with some embarrassment that I am finally writing…
Dave William Gill (not to be confused with Dave ‘Icarus’ Gill) will be known to many cavers in this country – and abroad – as one of our leading ‘expedition’ speleologists. His CV reads like a Rider Haggard adventure story, embracing first descents into some of the earth’s most challenging and spectacular caverns and explorations…
As I type, the Craven Pothole Club (CPC) is well into its 91st year. The founder member in September 1929 was Albert Mitchell, FRGS, who sadly passed away in October 1985. He was a prolific writer on caving and many other subjects. His early career as a reporter for the Craven Herald was partly why…
It is impossible to either ignore or underrate this fine book, which is part of my triumvirate of classic cave writing dating from the 1950s, alongside Underground Adventure and Subterranean Climbers. Like many of its contemporary companions, the narrative relates how a group of adventure-seeking friends came together to explore caves and stumbled, almost by…
If you’re anticipating having a lot of time on your hands and wondering what on earth you are going to do with your time during what could be a protracted period of social distancing, then look no further! Here we review a book, full of interest to any caver, longer than a good few classic…
Following Alan Jefferys’ review of Concrete Evidence by Victor S Wigmore, Darkness Below heard from Jim Pennington who came across another novel by Wigmore. Jim now takes up the tale … Adventures Underground grabbed my attention in an Oxfam shop – it carried a politely salacious inscription: “To Marjorie, With many thanks for ‘services rendered’….
UBSS, Bristol. 2019. 364pp, 20 colour photographs, 136 maps and surveys. Hardback, 180mm × 248mm. £20 ISBN 978-0-9545850-1-3 In one sense, Caves of Mid-West Ireland is the fourth edition of this caving guidebook, while in another it is the first. That is, the University of Bristol SS has a longstanding and well known intimate…
Alan Jeffreys recently came across a curious manuscript entitled Concrete Evidence, a speleo novel by Victor Stephen Wignore and reviews it here for Darkness Below. Squirrelled away amongst the papers of Eli Simpson and the now defunct British Speleological Association is a typed, carbon copy manuscript on quarto paper of a ‘thriller’ amounting to some…
Descent 271 has now arrived! If a copy hasn’t reached you, it’s time to head over to Wildplaces Publishing to subscribe now or if you’re lucky enough to have a caving shop anywhere near you, call in and get one from them. As we always say, we think Descent is great, and we want…
A young woman is so savagely beaten that it’s impossible to work out her identity. Becca thinks she knows who the woman must be, but the police aren’t convinced by her claims. But someone is determined to silence her … Jared Godwin is addicted to caves and mines, as well as dark, secret places where…
Swildon’s Hole and a terminally bad experience in Sump 1 feature in our latest look at caving fiction. I’ve followed Damian Boyd’s West Country police series on and off over the years but managed to miss out on Death Sentence, which features caving as part of the plot, so I’m grateful to Bob Mehew for…
As the cover states, Underground sets out to tell a human history of the worlds beneath our feet. As a caver, I approached a book on the underground written by an ‘urbexer’ with some trepidation as in some quarters of the caving world, urban explorers have a somewhat dubious reputation for trespassing. But I tried…
Alan Jeffreys enjoys a caving classic even if he doesn’t entirely approve of the author’s somewhat cavalier attitude to risk … Ernest Baker was well known in his day as an indefatigable climber, rambler and caver, whose activities embraced Alpine ascents as well as many cave explorations in Britain and Ireland. As a teacher of…
Kate Mosse is better known for Labyrinth and other books, but Alan Jeffreys recommends taking a look at her novella, The Cave, set in the Pyrenees Quick Reads, as outlined on the publisher’s promotional blurb, are ‘bite-sized books by bestselling writers … for people who want a short, fast-paced read.’ Novellas by authors as diverse…
In his quest for vintage caving books, Alan Jeffreys has delved into his bookshelves again, and has come up with a northern classic from the early 1960s … Following the publication of‘Underground Adventure in 1952 there was something of a hiatus in northern cave literature. Specialist titles from various clubs and societies kept cavers informed…
Alan Jeffreys continues his look at classic caving books with a review of a classic text that captures the excitement of underground exploration in the 1930s and 1940s as war raged and some of those involved were fighting on a secret front. Occasionally a writer with deep spiritual affinity for his subject produces a work of almost lyrical…
As part of our ongoing series of reviews of classic caving books, Alan Jeffreys looks at the groundbreaking Pennine Underground. With the plethora of UK caving guides at present available, it is easy to see a pattern of presentation common to all which is now taken for granted. What is not generally appreciated, however, is…
As part of a new series on classic caving books, both fact and fiction, Linda Wilson reviews Styx, a 1982 adventure novel with a surprisingly up-to-date twist … Two Japanese geologists on a visit to the Yugoslavian karst stumble on the find of the century, a previously unknown cave containing a roof decorated with what…
By way of preface to Archaeology of the Caves of Ireland in 2012, archaeologists Marion Dowd and Robert Hensey brought together a number of specialists to discuss in conference the impact of darkness found in caves (and artificial spaces such as souterrains) on the development of human history. The results were subsequently published in this…
TV archaeologist Nolan Moore is in search of a mysterious cavern in the Grand Canyon, discovered in 1909 by Kincaid, a man who returned with fabulous tales of an immense cave, decorated in places with what he described as hieroglyphs which hint at a more ancient occupation of the Americas than has always been believed….
Special Offer! The CDG publication WOOKEY HOLE tells the story of the pioneers and their cutting edge approaches to exploratory diving at one of Somerset’s best-known caves over the last 75 years. The book covers two periods: 1935 – 1985, and then 1986 to its publication in 2010. The introduction is by Jim Hanwell and…
A new print run of Rhosydd Slate Quarry, by M.J.T. Lewis and J.H. Denton, is now available. In 1974, the list of available literature covering mining history of any kind was not particularly long. In Cornwall, The publication of numerous popular books by Bradford Barton on the mines of S.W. England was well-established, but by…
When I first began caving, I eagerly worked my way through as many of the caving classics as possible. Most of the ones I was able to get hold of were about exploration in France, a country whose caving regions I now know well. It was with great delight in the 1980s that I came…
The 250th edition of the caving magazine Descent is arriving on cavers’ mats this week and that’s a milestone in the life of Descent that deserves commemoration! The latest edition contains headline articles on the Caves of the Kosua in the Darai Plateau in Papua New Guinea; the awful desecration of Hunters’ Lodge Inn Sink…
The Tratman Award, 2015 The Tratman Award has been awarded annually since 1979 to a caving-related paper-based publication in memory of E.K. Tratman, who died in 1978. It covers books, journals and articles published in a calendar year and is administered by the Ghar Parau Foundation, but judged by independent cavers; for 2015 these were…
Volume 42 of The Transactions of the British Cave Research Association for December 2015 is now available. The current edition contains papers on: “Hidden Recesses of Nature” – the science and aesthetics of subterranean space and the identity of the cave explorer: 1660 -1800 by Frank Pearson; Rates of calcite precipitation from hyperalkaline waters, Poole’s…
DI Tony McLean struggles to find a link between a series of bizarre killings in Edinburgh. Prayer for the Dead, the fifth book in James Oswald’s series about Edinburgh detective, DI Tony McLean, a magnet both for trouble and weird happenings, gets off to a suitably creepy start beneath the streets and the tension continues…
Garrison in Southern Indiana is a town that’s harbouring quite a few secrets, as Mark Novak discovers to his cost when he’s sent to look into an exceedingly cold case. Mark Novak works as a private investigator for Innocence Inc., a firm that specialises in taking on death row cases on a pro bono basis…
