How do you light a coal fire?

You don't just set a match to it and up it goes.

You have to clean all ash and dust out of the fireplace first. Get some dry paper and pile that up at the bottom. On top of this make a sort of wood raft, criss-cross it. Put the coal on top of the wood.

Light the fire from bottom (paper) in more than one place. Coal takes a long time to heat up so you need to burn stuff underneath it. If you put only paper underneath it will burn out too quickly. The idea is that when the wood and paper has burnt, the coal will be hot enough to sustain itself. This takes about half an hour.