Bertie Louis Coombes, or B. L. Coombes (1893-1974), wasa Welsh coalminer, notable for his autobiography These PoorHands: The Autobiography of a Miner in South Wales (1939)which became an instant bestseller. He also produced shortstories, dramas and other autobiographical works about the livesof coalminers and the communities in which they lived.

'Coombes and Alexander each had a passion to show the real life ofcoalmining communities to a wide public, Coombes through words and Alexander through pictures. Coalmining was veiled more opaquely than almost any other sector from the view of educated people andmetropolitan elites. Many of its particularities, literally hidden below ground, were unimaginable to outsiders who had never contemplated what it might be like to spend the day in darkness, to labour in a space no higher than a dining chair, to bear the daily crush of fear that a husband or father might not come home from work, or to suffer injustices of wage cuts, industrial disease and injury.'From the introduction by Peter Wakelin