The Fire Child

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I would like to thank, as ever, Eugenie Furniss, Jane Johnson, Sarah Hodgson, Kate Elton, and Anne O’Brien for their wise advice and many editorial insights. My thanks also to Sophie Hannah.

The photos in the book, of historic Cornish mining scenes, were taken by the Cornish photographer John Charles Burrow (1852–1914). The images date from the 1890s, when Burrow was commissioned by the owners of four of Cornwall’s deepest mines, Dolcoath, East Pool, Cook’s Kitchen, and Blue Hills, to capture scenes of life underground.

The original photographs are now kept at the Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro, England.

Morvellan Mine is an invention. It is, however, clearly based on the spectacular and historic mines scattered along the rugged cliffs of West Penwith, Cornwall. The tin and copper mines of Botallack, Geevor, and the Levant were particular inspirations.

Tin has been extracted from Cornwall for maybe four thousand years. At the age of ten my maternal grandmother Annie Jory worked as a “bal maiden”—a girl employed to crush rocks with a hammer—in the rich mines of St. Agnes, North Cornwall.

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