Home

Welcome to the world of historic Britain, and especially the corner where I had my roots. I was born in Cornwall, part of the “Celtic Fringe” of the British Isles. Cornwall emanates a spirit, a mystique, a beauty. Its people are unique, compelling and fascinating. The peninsula that makes up Cornwall lies at the southwestern tip of Britain, a place where picturesque scenery varies from great country houses and market towns and fishing villages, to tin and copper mines, bleak moors, Neolithic monuments, rugged cliffs, the English Channel and the Atlantic Ocean.

The Miner & the Viscount is set in the late eighteenth century, a time of social turbulence and historical significance, when Cornwall mirrored the history of Britain: the birth of the industrial and agricultural revolutions, the expansion of empire, the coming of the Enlightenment, the rise of Methodism. A royal duchy, Cornwall had 44 Members of Parliament (as many as all of Scotland); new-fangled steam engines worked in her tin and copper mines; her seamen explored the world’s oceans and her politicians led the exploitation of America.

Strong characters, both historical and fictional, struggled — then as now — with wealth and poverty, ambition and idealism, love and hatred, honor and revenge. In The Miner & the Viscount, those enduring life’s currents are brought to life once again by real and imagined people making their way through constant setbacks, advances, tragedies and pleasures, all against a backdrop of breathtaking, windswept beauty.

Richard Hoskin