McGUINNESS - INTERPRETING THE ART OF TOM McGUINNESS by Robert McManners and Gillian Wales (Gemini Productions, £14.95 softback/£24.95 hardback)

TOM McGuinness would have been 80 on Sunday and this full colour collection of 60 of his works was to be a birthday tribute.

Unfortunately, Tom died in February. As this book shows, he has left behind an extraordinary legacy which captures the essence of life in the Durham coalfield. With Spennymoor's Norman Cornish, he chronicled with his art the way generations of miners lived and thought.

This book, by a Bishop Auckland GP and the manager of Bishop Auckland Town Hall, is all about Tom's paintings. Sixty of them from across his six decades of work have been selected. They show how he evolved, from his accurate, emotional drawings of the 1940s to his powerful impressionistic work of later years where the miners are characteristically bow-legged and bandy-footed.

The 1980s were an especially bleak period for McGuinness. His wife died and the mining industry was shut down. Suddenly his miners become shrunken skulls as if they were concentration camp victims - but the life was being sucked out of their livelihood and their communities.

Each picture is accompanied by a couple of lines which amplify it. For instance, this picture is entitled The A Team of 1990, and the authors explain that it shows the miners going to the face, instinctively heading down the left-hand tunnel which is supported by crude pit-props of yesterday.

At the centre of the picture are two deputies and they are trying to direct the man down the right hand tunnel which is clearly a new construction with regular arches holding up the ceiling.

The choice, say the authors, is not the miners'. It is up to their bosses which tunnel they go down - and whether they have a job at the end of it.

* As well as all good bookshops, McGuinness is available from Bishop Auckland Town Hall on (01388) 602610.

Published: 02/05/2006