Tommy Armstrong; The Pitman Poet, Ray Tilly (Summerhill Books, Newcastle upon Tyne, (2010) 192pp., paperback, £9.99 ISBN 978 1 906721 30 5.

This biography of Thomas Armstrong (1848-1920) the Pitman Poet of Tanfield Lea is by his detective grandson Ray Tilly who helps to dispel misconceptions about his father William Hunter Armstrong who had no part in his upbringing by a single mother and of Tommy himself.

Tilly has researched diligently and writes lucidly but it is understandably a very personal book and its style is unsophisticated.  He has been concerned to establish whether there is any truth in suggestions that Tommy was a drunkard and imprisoned for six months for theft and whether William was as upright a figure as has been traditionally thought.  Tilly has produced a mass of evidence from newspapers especially.  Certainly Tommy had a notable sense of humour and wrote humorous poems, some in dialect and some in Standard English despite his limited education.  Memorably he wrote a poem about ‘The Trimdon Grange Explosion of 1882' an outstanding tragedy of Victorian England and another on Durham Jail, but there is no evidence he was convicted of theft or as his son William suggested was a drunkard.  William Hunter Armstrong (1874-1953) was a poet though not as prolific as Tommy.  He was a prominent Methodist and trade unionist, spending fifty years as a miner.  The father of an illegitimate son, the author, he had three marriages and a divorce.

Tilly reproduces some thirty previously published works by Tommy and sixteen unpublished and some of the works of William.  The book is lavishly illustrated; a family tree, a glossary, references and bibliography are provided bur no index.

At £9.99 it is remarkably cheap.  The proceeds are to be divided between ‘The Tommy Armstrong Society' and the North East Region of the Stroke Society (Tommy suffered grievously from strokes).