Tom Hague was born in Sheffield on Boxing Day, 1915. After leaving school at the age of fourteen he held various jobs, but spent most of his working life as a miner, becoming an active member of his local branch of the NUM. During the war years, he served in South East Asia. In 1937, Tom Hague married Ivy May Cheetham. They had two daughters (and eventually two grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren).

Although Tom Hague’s formal education was limited, he read widely, and started writing seriously during the 1972 miners’ strike. Some of his works were published in 1976 as “Totley Tom : tales of a Yorkshire miner”. On the inside of the dust-jacket is written: “These are his stories, in prose and verse, of the place where he lives, the people he meets and the work he does”. Some, but not all, of the material is in dialect. He went on to become something of a celebrity, writing letters to newspapers, taking part in radio phone-ins, and appearing on TV.

Tom Hague died in 1998, at the age of 83. After his death, his relatives gathered together the pieces he’d written since his 1976 book, with the aim of publishing all his writings as one complete book.