‘I believe Brighton has more disturbed people in relation to the size of the population, than any other town in the country. There’s a sort of unreality about the town. It’s too frivolous. People don’t really listen to each other. They seem very excited and distracted. It is because it’s a holiday town, with too many distractions - the sea, the beach, the pier, the pretty women (there seems so many of them here), the men on the prowl for women, the buskers, the beach cafes with their coloured sunshades and ice-cream adverts, a sense of permanent holidaying atmosphere.’ This is a diary entry written exactly 30 years ago today by Des Marshall, the son of a Russian Jew and a Welsh coalminer’s daughter.
Marshall was born in 1941, in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, but he suffered so badly from asthma as a child that he spent most of the first ten years of his life in an institution for sick children. He found life no less difficult as a young man in London in the 1960s, with depression rarely far away. He worked at many jobs, not least being a stand-up comedian in holiday camps; and he travelled widely, to Russia and India among other places.
The chronic depression eventually led him to Dr Peter Chadwick, a psychologist, who had suffered from schizophrenia and written very sympathetically about mental illness. Indeed, in two publications, Chadwick used Marshall as a subject of his studies. In 1994, Marshall became a Quaker, and in the same year he began to write a journal. At the time, he was living in Camden, but in February 1995 he moved to Brighton, and stayed for over two years.
The following year, David Roberts, who runs Saxon Books, published the diary as Journal of an Urban Robinson Crusoe. ‘Dear Reader,’ Marshall says by way of introduction, ‘I want to tell you the truth about this journal. I didn’t write it. It was written by a man who called himself Urban Robinson Crusoe who, for some reason I don’t understand, happened to look very much like me.’
I came across Des Marshall and his journal while researching my book Brighton in Diaries for The History Press. Here are several extracts from the chapter dedicated to Marshall (and two old photographs of mine, partially illustrating the ‘frivolous’ nature and ‘distractions’ mentioned by Marshall in his 21 April entry).
15 February 1995
‘I suppose I am a Brightonian now. I still wander the streets but it’s just so much more pleasant to do that here, and I see so many so-called Robinson Crusoes, who don’t realise what they have become.
Brighton is a strange town of contrasting types of people jumbled up and thrown together: the very poor, the very rich, gangsters, day-trippers, the unemployed coming down for the summer from the cities, possibly to get work for the season, students from other countries to learn English, artists, writers, street performers. Well-off show-biz people live here, and there’s a big gay scene.
Graham Greene, the writer, who lived in Brighton, called Brighton a fugitive town. There’s a sort of truth in that; people are always coming and going, just like London.
There are mad people thrown out of the asylums that they are closing down. There is a big one at Haywards Heath, half way between London and Brighton. The inmates have a choice when they leave, London or Brighton. Most opt for Brighton, for reasons I would think are obvious. Anything you want in London you can get here.’
21 April 1995
‘I believe Brighton has more disturbed people in relation to the size of the population, than any other town in the country. There’s a sort of unreality about the town. It’s too frivolous. People don’t really listen to each other. They seem very excited and distracted. It is because it’s a holiday town, with too many distractions - the sea, the beach, the pier, the pretty women (there seems so many of them here), the men on the prowl for women, the buskers, the beach cafes with their coloured sunshades and ice-cream adverts, a sense of permanent holidaying atmosphere. It distracts people, even if you live here. You get sort of sucked into the excitement and get distracted. [. . .] People wear such odd clothes that don’t really match. Could be, sort of punk, with a bit of hippy thrown in, or mohair with greatcoat, or a collar and tie man, with shorts of different colours, possibly even with a bowler hat.’
‘There should be a book written on how to survive Brighton. One thing I have found out is that you don’t take it, or even the people, too seriously. That might sound like a harsh thing to say, but that is the nature of the beast. What I mean is, it’s a hello, goodbye, sort of town, tinsel town.
The people who live here, or have made their life here, probably live very varied lives, and are into all sorts of activities outside their own domesticities - things like dancing, singing, writing groups, yoga, t’ai chi, religious groups, psychology meetings, humanist groups, the state of the nation groups, psychic groups, political discussion groups, old age discussion groups, gender bender groups, gay groups, social issue groups, single people meeting groups, history of Brighton groups. [. . .]’
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