Coming Back Brockens: A year I

(A few years ago Mark Hudson went to live in Horden, a mining village on the bleak east coast of Durham. Horden had been the biggest colliery in Britain and among the men who had worked there were Mark Hudson's great grandfather and grandfather. The pit has now closed and Horden remains alive only in the memories of its old people. In search of his forebears Mark Hudson listens to tales of how it was of the hardships and traditions of the miner's life, of the struggles and triumphs of the union. And tales too of his ancestors, but these are curiously fickle: they flicker and fluctuate; the only certainty is the pit)