Monday 15 January 2018 (Indoor meeting): 'King Coal'. Speaker: Alan Hill, author of 'The South Yorkshire Coalfield: A History and Development'. Alan is a retired manufacturing engineer, who has worked in the UK and overseas. In semi-retirement he worked for Warwick University, particularly in Hong Kong. Born at Barrow-in-Furness, he was brought up in a mining village in South Yorkshire and later spent much of his career working in Birmingham.