41 Places 41 Stories

‘Mark walks the shingle, slowly sweeping his metal detector from side to side listening for the bleep on his headphones? This isn’t his usual haunt. More often he’s down at the Volk’s Railway, where he takes his wife to get out of the flat. His wife’s not very well. She can’t go out on her own any more.’ This is the start of Story 32, about Brighton Beach, in William Shaw’s 41 Places 41 Stories (UnMadeUp, 2007). The small curio of a book was first published as a city-wide installation commission by the 2007 Brighton Festival.

Shaw, who now lives in Brighton, was once a music journalist but, around 2013, he turned - successfully to crime fiction (indeed, he has just published his latest novel - The Red Shore). 41 Places 41 Stories - which can be sampled online at Googlebooks - relates ‘true stories picked up on street corners, taxi ranks, pubs, car parks - even in public toilets’, with each one inhabiting its own geography: a specific place in the centre of a British seaside town. The publisher’s blurb explains; ‘If the essence of narrative is change, William Shaw distils it here in these tales of love, loss and self-discovery. Brighton is, after all, a place where people have always come to transform themselves.’ 

Story 32 is entitled The other day he found a 1966 American silver dollar on the beach. Makes you think, and it has a location subtitle - The beach between the piers. (The photograph above is my own, and has no direct link to Shaw’s book.) Here’s the piece: 

‘Mark walks the shingle, slowly sweeping his metal detector from side to side listening for the bleep on his headphones?

This isn’t his usual haunt. More often he’s down at the Volk’s Railway, where he takes his wife to get out of the flat. His wife’s not very well. She can’t go out on her own any more.

Today, though, his daughter’s down to visit. She’s taken her mother out, so he’s come down here for a change.

He bends down and starts to dig with his trowel. Just under the surface, a shiny 50p piece.

When he was a boy living in First Avenue in Hove, this is where he used to scavenge empty coke bottles for the 3d return money. He would climb up under the West Pier and scour the beams for sixpenny bits that had fallen through the gaps in the boards.

Some make their living down here with metal detectors. At dawn, a half dozen of them will be inching across the stones picking up cash dropped from the pockets of drunken clubbers.

Not Mark. He’s not interested in the money any more. He spent his life going ninety miles an hour. Last couple of years he’s just stopped. For him this is more like archaeology - finding something, wondering how it got there. The other day he found a 1966 American silver dollar on the beach. Makes you think. What’s the story? It’s just a buzz, not knowing what you’re going to pull out. Like fishing.

Tonight he’s cooking sea bass, his favourite. He does all the cooking at home. He is the glue, the one that holds it together.

See those buildings on the seafront? Mark’s been on the roofs of most of them. He used to be a tiler. Working so high up all your life gives you a perspective. Up there, you lose the fear of dying, and with it, your sense of selfishness.

Another noise in his headphones. He reaches down and picks up a rust-crusted penny. That one may have been down there for years.’

Pining for Sabrina Zembra

‘He began to think that if he passed away from this laughing and murmuring crowd, and went out to the end of the pier, and quietly slipped down into the placid waters, the world would be none the worse for the want of him, and a good deal of heart-sickness would come to an end.’ This is from Sabina Zembra, a lesser known novel set in Brighton by Victorian author William Black.

Black was born in Glasgow in 1841. He initially studied art, but became a reporter for Scottish newspapers. Later, in London, he worked for the Morning Star and Daily News, serving as a war correspondent during Garibaldi’s campaign and the Franco-Prussian War. His breakthrough novel, A Daughter of Heth (1871), marked the start of a prolific literary career. Known for his lyrical prose, romantic plots, and vividly rendered landscapes, he became one of the most widely read novelists of the 1870s and 1880s - see Wikipedia.

Black’s work often balanced sentiment with moral seriousness and featured strong, emotionally intelligent female characters. His best-known novels include The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton (1872), A Princess of Thule (1873), and MacLeod of Dare (1879). Though his popularity waned after his death, in his lifetime he was widely admired, with some critics likening his descriptive power to that of Thomas Hardy or even early Tennyson.

While primarily associated with Scotland and London, Black and his second wife, Eva Simpson, moved to Brighton in 1878 - see The Victorian Web. And Brighton then featured in his 1881 novel, The Beautiful Wretch, and subsequently in Sabina Zembra. In this latter novel, the reflective opening scenes unfold along the town’s seafront and Chain Pier, capturing its blend of gaiety and melancholy. Black actually died in Brighton in 1898 and was buried near the church door of St Margaret's, Rottingdean, close to the grave of Edward Burne-Jones.

Sabina Zembra was first published in 1887 by Macmillan - the full work is freely available to read online at Internet Archive. It explores themes of love, melancholy, and social expectation against the contrasting backdrops of London and the English seaside. The story centres on Walter Lindsay, a sensitive, somewhat disillusioned man who escapes the pressures of life in London by retreating to Brighton. Though surrounded by crowds, he is inwardly solitary, his thoughts haunted by a woman named Sabina Zembra. Sabina is not just a love interest but a symbol of a purer, nobler affection in a world that feels increasingly hollow. As Lindsay wanders through Brighton’s piers and promenades, he contemplates life, despair, and romantic ideals. Here is a passage that opens chapter 15 entitled The Wedding.

‘It was a summer night at Brighton. The tall house-fronts were gray and wan against the crimson and yellow still lingering in the north-western heavens; but far away over the sea, to the south-east, there dwelt a golden moon in a sky of pale rose-purple; and the moonlight that fell on the wide waters was soft and shimmering, until it gleamed sharp and vivid where the ripples broke on the beach. Here and there the stars of the gas lamps began to tell in the twilight. There was a faint murmur of talking; young girls in their summer costumes went by, with laughter and jest; there was an open window, and somebody within a brilliantly lit drawing-room was singing - in a voice not very loud but still audible to such of the passers-by as happened to pause and listen - an old Silesian air. It was about a lover, and a broken ring, and the sound of a mill-wheel.

Walter Lindsay was among these casual listeners - for a minute or two; and then he went on, with some curious fancies in his head. Not that any young maiden had deceived him, or that he was particularly anxious to find rest in the grave; for this is the latter half of the nineteenth century, and he, as well as others, knew that Wertherism [morbid sentimentality, regarded as characteristic of Werther, the hero of Goethe’s romance] was now considered ridiculous. But somehow London had become intolerable to him; and he could not work; and - well, Brighton was the nearest place to get away to, while one was considering further plans. It was a little lonely, it is true; especially on these summer evenings, when all the world seemed, as it were, to be murmuring in happiness.

Over there was the Chain Pier. A few golden points - gas lamps - glimmered on it; and beyond it there was a small boat, the sail of which caught the last dusky-red light from the sunset, and looked ghostly on the darkening plain. In that direction peace seemed to lie. He began to think that if he passed away from this laughing and murmuring crowd, and went out to the end of the pier, and quietly slipped down into the placid waters, the world would be none the worse for the want of him, and a good deal of heart-sickness would come to an end. He did not really contemplate suicide; it was a mere fancy. Killing oneself for love is not known nowadays, except among clerks and shop-lads; and then it is generally prefaced by cutting a young woman’s throat, which is unpleasant. No, it was a mere fancy that haunted him, and not in a too mournful fashion.’

Dombey’s son on Brighton Beach

Charles Dickens, who died 155 years ago today, knew Brighton well. He first visited the seaside resort in October 1837 and returned frequently over the next 30 years, often staying at the Bedford Hotel (now replaced by the modern Holiday Inn on the seafront following the original building’s destruction by fire in 1964). He also lodged at the Old Ship Hotel and with friends in private residences. While in Brighton, Dickens worked on parts of several novels, including Bleak House, Barnaby Rudge, and most notably Dombey and Son.

Dickens appreciated Brighton not just as a place to write, but to observe. In a newly discovered letter, he wrote: ‘I feel much better for my short stay here, also the characters one meets at these seaside places.’ In 2012, a blue plaque was unveiled on the Holiday Inn to mark the 200th anniversary of his birth, commemorating his strong links to the town. Further details of his Brighton connections are available at the Brighton & Hove Museums website.

In Dombey and Son, the Brighton coast plays a central symbolic and narrative role. The novel, a meditation on pride, emotional repression, and redemption, follows the life of Paul Dombey, a cold, ambitious businessman obsessed with his shipping empire and the hope of passing it to a male heir. The story opens with the birth of his son, Paul Jr., and the simultaneous death of his wife. Dombey’s daughter, Florence, is largely ignored - valued neither in business nor lineage.

The frail and introspective Paul Jr. is advised to spend time by the sea for his health, and so he and Florence are sent to Brighton. They stay first at the austere Mrs. Pipchin’s boarding house and later at the school of the formidable Dr. Blimber. These episodes mark some of the most poignant and poetic passages in Dickens’s writing, in which Brighton Beach becomes more than a setting: it is a landscape of revelation, sorrow, and spiritual inquiry.

In chapter eight, we discover Paul’s favourite place is not among the bustling crowds, but a quiet, remote stretch of beach, where Florence reads to him and he reflects deeply: ‘His favourite spot was quite a lonely one, far away from most loungers; and with Florence sitting by his side at work, or reading to him. . . he wanted nothing more.’ He becomes fascinated by the sea, sensing a hidden language in the endless waves: ‘The sea, Floy, what is it that it keeps on saying?’ She told him that it was only the noise of the rolling waves. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said. ‘But I know that they are always saying something. Always the same thing.’

The beach also gives Dickens the chance to provide Paul with limited social interaction: a daily encounter with a gruff, elderly fisherman - ‘a weazen, old, crab-faced man in a suit of battered oil-skin’ - adds colour to his otherwise quiet days. Yet solitude and introspection dominate: ‘Another time, in the same place, he fell asleep, and slept quietly for a long time. Awaking suddenly, he listened, started up, and sat listening.’

The Victorian Web website has several illustrations of Brighton Beach from different editions of Dombey and Son. The one immediately above is by Harold Copping for Mary Angela Dickens’s Children’s Stories from Dickens and the one above that is by W. L. Sheppard for the 1873 American Household Edition of Dombey and Son.

One cannot say the novel ends happily since despite the hopeful associations of sea air and convalescence, Paul’s condition worsens, and he dies young. Florence is heartbroken and the emotional void between her and her father deepens. Nevertheless - this is Dickens after all - there is, ultimately, a sense of moral reckoning and eventual redemption.

Beyond writing retreats, Dickens’s relationship with Brighton was also marked by performance. He gave several public readings in the town, including a much-admired appearance at the Royal Pavilion on 9 November 1861, where his dramatic rendering of scenes from his novels drew packed audiences. Brighton featured again on his Farewell Reading Tour in 1867-1868, during which his health was already deteriorating. Indeed, he would die on 9 June 1870, Much more on Dickens can be found at Wikipedia.

The faintest and purest blue

It is 110 years since Eric Cyril Egerton Leadbitter published his first novel, Rain Before Seven, partially set in Brighton where the ‘dazzling sea [. . .] tumbles in white foam over the shingle’ and where the sea can be ‘washed [. . .] to the faintest and purest blue’. Little seems to be remembered of Leadbitter, though he seems to have abandoned a promising literary talent for a career in the civil service.

He was born in 1891, possibly in Hexham, and educated at Shrewsbury, but his early life and education are otherwise barely documented in public records. He began a literary career during World War I, publishing a series of novels that reflected the themes and styles of his era: Rain Before Seven (1915), The Road to Nowhere (1916), Perpetual Fires (1918), Shepherd’s Warning (1921), Dead Reckoning (1922), and The Evil that Men Do (1923). Wikipedia lists only these six novels for him, and, similarly, the British Library catalogue has only these same six titles.

Thereafter, Leadbitter built a distinguished career in the British civil service. Who Was Who lists Tunbridge Wells as his place of residence. In 1937, he was appointed Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (CVO), an honour recognising his service to the Crown. His most significant administrative role came in 1942, when he was appointed Clerk of the Privy Council, a senior position he held until 1951. During his tenure, he was knighted as a Knight Bachelor in 1946 and, in 1951, was promoted to Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (KCVO), reflecting the high regard in which he was held within government circles.

On the personal front, Leadbitter married Irene Lloyd in 1918, though there seems to be no public information regarding his family life and whether he had children. He died in 1971. 

Rain Before Seven was first published in 1915 by G. Allen & Unwin. The story follows a young boy named Michael as he prepares to leave home for the first time. The narrative explores Michael’s emotions and experiences leading up to his departure, including his relationships with family members, his imagination, and his fears about the future. The book is divided into three parts: The Idle Apprentice, Obscurity and Enlightenment, and the US edition (1920) can be freely read online at Internet Archive. Incidentally, several books with the same title have appeared over the years, most likely because of the popularity of the traditional weather lore ‘Rain before seven, fine before eleven’.

The following extract about Brighton is taken from Leadbitter’s Rain Before Seven, chapter XXVI entitled The Prodigal Brother.

‘Brighton is a most deceptive town; the hints that it gives of its past are as little to be relied upon as those of certain of its lady visitors when they are in reminiscent mood. To a visitor who is enterprising enough to explore them, the little by-streets that lead from the Western Road appear to belong to a past when the town slept the sleep of gentle Georgian cathedral cities, untainted by the neighbouring metropolis. There are strangely huddled little houses that might date from an innocent youth that touched hands with the medievals. Nevertheless, as every Londoner and many natives know, a century ago nothing except a fishing village lay at the foot of the cliffs where Brighton with her flaunting pride now stands. Evil fairies attended her christening; George of ill-repute was her sponsor, and she has never thrown off the shadow of her early influences. Brighton with all her witchery is the British Paris; she is the pleasure suburb where Londoners pursue their vices in secrecy. But who can resist the witchery of the air? the dry and sunny wind, and the dazzling sea that tumbles in white foam over the shingle? Not, at any rate, a group of young people who were passing along the front one sunny April morning, a year later than the events recorded in the last chapter, with the brisk and ecstatic walk that vouches for an early bathe behind, and a voracious appetite for a breakfast to come. The previous day had been stormy, and mists of rain had washed the sea to the faintest and purest blue. On the foreshore, a few figures were bending over the pebbles, searching for the small treasures that a heavy sea like that of the preceding day usually unearthed. The party on the promenade stopped to watch them, and one of the girls asked her companion what they were doing.

“I don’t know much about it,” he replied, “but I have an idea they are called beach-combers, or something. They rake up old sixpences and things among the stones.”

“How exciting! I suppose they are always hoping to find a wonderful buried treasure. Rosie!” she called to an older girl who was behind her, “what do you say to having a shot at it?” ’

[NB: The portrait of Leadbitter has been screenshot from the National Portrait Gallery website.]

I am Brighton

This day seven years ago, Century published Dorothy Koomson’s The Brighton Mermaid. Said to be a gripping thriller, it follows the story of teenagers Nell and Jude who find the body of an unidentified young woman on Brighton beach. On her right arm is the tattoo of a mermaid, and below it are etched the words ‘I am Brighton’. The narrative shifts between past and present as Nell tries to uncover the truth about her death and the disappearance of Jude 25 years later. 

Koomson is a Brighton-based British novelist and journalist, widely regarded as one of the UK’s most successful Black authors of adult fiction, with her books translated into over 30 languages and sales exceeding 2.5 million copies in the UK alone. Born in London to Ghanaian parents, she wrote her first novel at age 13 and later earned degrees in psychology and journalism from Leeds University. She began her professional writing career in women’s magazines before publishing her debut novel, The Cupid Effect, in 2003. Her third novel, My Best Friend’s Girl, became a major bestseller, and The Ice Cream Girls was adapted into a successful television drama. 

The Brighton Mermaid - first published on 17 May 2018 - is said to be fast-paced and thrilling, and to explore ‘the deadly secrets of those closest to you’. Here is the moment, right at the start of the book, Nell is narrating, when the reader is first taken on to Brighton beach. It is 1993. 

‘From the promenade, I’d spotted her down on the beach, the light of the almost full moon shining down on her, and said we should check to see if she was all right. Jude had wanted us to keep going, getting back to her house after we’d sneaked out was going to be tricky enough without getting back even later than 3 a.m., which was the time now. But I’d insisted we check. What if she’d twisted her ankle and couldn’t get up? How would we feel, leaving someone who was hurt alone like that? What if she’s drunk and has fallen asleep on the beach when the tide was out and is now too drunk to wake up and pull herself out of the water? How would we live with ourselves if we read in the paper in the morning that she’d been washed out to sea and had drowned?

Jude had rolled her eyes at me, had reminded me in an angry whisper that even though our mums were at work (they were both nurses on night duty), her dad was at home asleep and could wake up any minute now to find us gone. He’d call my dad and then we’d be for it. She’d grumbled this while going towards the stone steps that led to the beach. She was all talk, was Jude - she wouldn’t want to leave someone who was hurt, she would want to help as much as I did. It wasn’t until we’d got nearer, close enough to be able to count the breaths that weren’t going in and out of her chest, that we could to see what the real situation was. And I said that thing about her being asleep.

‘I’ll go up to the . . . I’ll go and call the police,’ Jude said. She didn’t even give me a chance to say I would do it before she was gone - crunching the pebbles underfoot as she tried to get away as fast as possible.

Alone, I felt foolish and scared at the same time. This wasn’t meant to turn out this way. We were meant to come to the beach and help a drunk lady and then sneak back to Jude’s house. I wasn’t supposed to be standing next to someone who was asleep but not.

She must be cold, I thought suddenly. Her vest top was soaked through and stuck to her body like a second, clingy skin; her denim skirt, which didn’t quite reach down to her knees, was also wringing wet. ‘I wish I had a blanket that I could pull over you,’ I silently said to her. ‘If I had a blanket, I’d do my best to keep you warm.’

It was summer, but not that warm. I wasn’t sure why she was only wearing a vest, skirt and no shoes. Maybe, I thought, her shoes and jumper have already been washed out to sea.

I leant forwards to have another look at her. I wanted to make her feel more comfortable, to move her head from resting on her left arm at an awkward angle, and stop her face from being pushed into the dozens and dozens of bracelets she wore on her arm. Thin metal ones, bright plastic ones, wood ones, black rubbery ones, they stretched from her wrist to her elbow, some of them not visible because of where her head rested. I wanted to gently move her head off her arm and lay it instead on myrolled-up jacket. I didn’t dare touch her though. I didn’t dare move any nearer, let alone touch her.

Her other arm, the right one, was thrown out to one side, as if it had flopped there when she’d finally fallen asleep. That arm had only one slender silver charm bracelet, hung with lots of little silver figures. That arm’s real decoration, though, was an elegant and detailed tattoo of a mermaid. My eyes wouldn’t leave the tattoo, which was so clear in the moonlight. Usually when I saw tattoos they were a faded greeny-blue, etched into peach or white skin, but this one was on a girl with the same shade skin as me. Deep black ink had artistically been used to stain and adorn most of her inner forearm. I leant a little more forwards, not wanting to get too close, but fascinated enough to want to have a better look. It was truly beautiful, so incredibly detailed it looked like it had been carefully inscribed onto paper, not rendered on skin.

I could see every curl of the mermaid’s short, black Afro hair; I could make out the tiny squares of light in her pupils; I could count every one of the individually etched scales on her tail, and I could see droplets of water glistening on the bodice, shaped of green seaweed, that covered her torso. The mermaid sat on a craggy grey rock, her hands demurely crossed in her lap, smiling at anyone who cared to look at her.

I couldn’t stop staring at her. She was mythical, she was a picture, but she was also like a siren at whom I couldn’t stop staring. In the waters beneath the mermaid’s rock, there were three words in a swirling, watery script: ‘I am Brighton’.

Guest: Brighton Beach, Dunedin, New Zealand

Brighton Beach, the fifth of this column’s guest beaches, is situated just 20 kilometers southwest of Dunedin, in the South Island of New Zealand. A rather idyllic settlement, Brighton offers expansive golden sands, gentle surf, and a family-friendly atmosphere as demonstrated by its annual Gala Day right next to the beach. As it happens, I have not only been to the place (diary entry below), but I have just learned that the renowned Kiwi poet James K. Baxter grew up in and around Brighton.

Brighton - with a population of about 1,500 - lies on the Otago peninsula within the city limits of Dunedin. It is connected by coastal road with the Dunedin commuter settlement of Waldronville to the northeast and with Taieri Mouth to the southwest. The settlement of Ocean View lies immediately to the east of Brighton, separated from it by a large bluff (simply known as ‘Big Rock’) which juts towards the ocean. The beach is popular for summer day trips from Dunedin; and, at low tide, visitors can explore tidal pools, and the nearby Otokia Creek which offers a scenic walking track through a nature reserve.

Nearby, the Beachlands Speedway in Waldronville offers stock car and saloon car racing events, while surfers can head to Blackhead Beach. In January, the Brighton Domain (a grassy area just behind the beach) hosts the community’s Gala Day, a family-friendly event featuring over 150 stalls, amusement rides, entertainment, and food vendors. 

The area around Brighton was not the site of permanent settlement by pre-colonial Māori, but was on their regular trails from their homes on Otago Peninsula to their traditional hunting grounds. Archaeological evidence suggests it was the site of seal and sea lion hunting, as well as hunting of moa. Stone tool making may have also taken place around the area. European settlement began in the 1860s. The town was named by an early resident, Hugh Williams, after Brighton in England. Early industries included coal mining, with lignite being plentiful at nearby Ocean View. 

As it happens, I lived in Dunedin for a year or so in 1975 (during my three-year long travels), and went to Brighton on two or three occasions. Here is a diary entry for one of those visits

September 1975: ‘Today I went for a little hitch-hike down a small coast road to a place called Brighton, a small village, and there I found a commotion as the people were standing around because a man in a power boat had been thrown out of it by the rough surf, for hours surf rescue teams and a sea place searched the rocky coast for the body and the tourists built up, cooing people and eager helpers, it all made me very sad. Then, when I got home, I had a phone call from someone who had found my kitten Ginquin because she had gone missing when I was away last week, so that made me happy again.’

While researching this article, I discovered that James K. Baxter grew up in the area. On his first day at Brighton Primary School (now Big Rock Primary School), he burned his hand on a stove, and, later, he used this incident to represent the failure of institutional education. Baxter is considered one of the preeminent writers of his generation, but he was a controversial figure (see Wikipedia), troubled by alcoholism and later converting to Catholicism and establishing a commune. He died aged only 46, in 1972, His Maori wife, Jacquie Sturm, collected and catalogued his prolific output of poems and plays, and managed his literary estate. 

During my travels, I was often to be found trekking along roadsides, hitchhiking, looking for my next ride, heading for the next unknown place. And I’d find myself reciting the same verse of poetry over and over.

Upon the upland road

Ride easy stranger

Surrender to the sky

Your heart of anger

High Country Weather (J. K. Baxter, 1945)

Roy Grace on the seafront

Exactly 20 years ago today (possibly!) Peter James’s first Roy Grace novel was published - Dead Simple. I say ‘possibly’ because while ChatGPT provides 5 May 2005 as the exact date it was first published, other sources offer 6 May, and various other dates, too. Peter James is, of course, a great advocate of Brighton and Hove with many of his much-loved crime novels set in the city.  

‘For me there was only ever one location for Roy Grace to be based,’ he told The Book Trail. my hometown of Brighton. To the outsider, Brighton is a hip, beautiful seaside city, but it has a long history of darkness - right back to its roots as a smugglers village! In Regency days it gained a reputation both as a fashionable bathing resort, but in 1841 when the London-Brighton railway line opened, criminals flooded down from London, finding rich pickings and a much nicer environment than their city! They brought cock-fighting, prostitution, pick-pockets, muggers, smugglers, burglars, and gangs. Simultaneously, with the railway enabling quick access from London, many wealthy Londoners brought their mistresses down here and it became known as a place for “dirty weekends”.

James, born 1948, is the son of Cornelia James, who, famously, was glovemaker to Queen Elizabeth II. He was educated at Charterhouse and Ravensbourne Film School, and spent several years in North America, working as a screenwriter and film producer. He has told interviewers that he briefly worked at the home of Orson Welles. Back in the UK, his literary career took off with the Roy Grace series of novels, selling more than 23 million copies worldwide and making him into a household name among crime fiction enthusiasts. His books are known for their fast-paced plots, unexpected twists, and authentic portrayals of modern policing. The list of awards on his Wikipedia bio is almost as long as the list of published novels! Since 2021, the Roy Grace novels have been successfully adapted for broadcast by ITV - giving Brighton yet more screen time!  

Here is James jogging Grace along Brighton Beach in that first novel, Dead Simple (extract taken from chapter 42).

‘Grace started his weekend the way he liked, with an early-Saturday-morning six-mile run along Brighton and Hove seafront. Today it was again raining hard, but that did not matter; he wore a baseball cap with the peak pulled down low to shield his face, a lightweight tracksuit and brand new Nike running shoes. Powering along at a good, fast pace, he soon forgot the rain, forgot all his cares, just breathed deep, went from cushioned stride to cushioned stride, a Stevie Wonder song, ‘Signed, Sealed, Delivered’, playing over in his head, for some reason.

He mouthed the words as he ran past an old man in a trenchcoat walking a poodle on a leash, and then was passed by two Lycra-clad cyclists on mountain bikes. It was low tide. Out on the mudflats a couple of fishermen were digging lugworms for bait. With the tang of salt on his lips, he ran alongside the promenade railings, on past the burnt-out skeleton of the West Pier, then down a ramp to the edge of the beach itself, where the local fishermen left their day boats dragged up far enough to be safe from the highest of tides. He clocked some of their names - Daisy Lee, Belle of Brighton, Sammy - smelled bursts of paint, tarred rope, putrefying fish as he ran on past the still-closed cafes, amusement arcades and art galleries of the Arches, past a windsurfing club, a boating pond behind a low concrete wall, a paddling pool, then underneath the girdered mass of the Palace Pier - where seventeen years back he and Sandy had had their first kiss, and on, starting to tire a little now, but determined to get to the cliffs of Black Rock before he turned round.’

And here is James, a year or so later, again jogging his detective along the seafront in the second of the series, Looking Good Dead (chapter 34).

‘His route took him straight down to the Kingsway, a wide dual carriageway running along Hove seafront. On one side were houses that would give way in half a mile or so to continuous mansion blocks and hotels - some modern, some Victorian, some Regency - that continued the full length of the seafront. Opposite were two small boating lagoons and a playground, lawns and then the promenade with stretches of beach huts, and the pebble beaches beyond, and just over a mile to the east, the wreck of the old West Pier.

It was almost deserted and he felt as if he had the whole city to himself. He loved being out this early on a weekend, as if he had stolen a march on the world. The tide was out, and he could see the orb of the rising sun already well up in the sky. A man walked, far out on the mudflats, swinging a metal detector. A container ship, barely more defined than a smudge, sat out on the horizon, looking motionless.

A sweeper truck moved slowly towards Grace, engine roaring, its brushes swirling, scooping up the usual detritus of a Friday night, the discarded fast-food cartons, Coke cans, cigarette butts, the occasional needle.

Grace stopped in the middle of the promenade, a short distance from a wino curled up asleep on a bench, and did his stretches, breathing deeply that familiar seafront smell he loved so much - the salty tang of the fresh, mild air, richly laced with rust and tar, old rope and putrid fish - that Brighton’s elder generation of seaside landladies liked referring to in their brochures as ozone.

Then he began his six-mile run, to the start of the Marina and back again.’

Fantasy, history and rhythm collide

Not that Brighton Beach needs much brightening up, but Dan Lish’s two murals do exactly that, one a whimsical hip-hop reimagining of Alice in Wonderland, and the other a wanderer’s dreamscape with floating turntables, cosmic clouds, and futuristic urban beats. Both murals fill up the frontage of Gallery 242, just west of the Palace Pier, and they can also be viewed online on the gallery’s website.

Lish describes himself as ‘a multi-disciplined artist . . . specialising in illustration, Video Game concept Art and Wall art’. Now living in Brighton, he spent seven years in New York City, freelancing as an illustrator and concept artist for clients including Sony, Lucas Arts and Rockstar Games. Within the video game industry he has been working on ‘numerous flagship titles for major developers’.

Lish also lists ‘comic and book illustrations, album cover art, and toy design’ among his artistic outputs. Through his celebrated Egostrip project, Lish says he has reimagined music legends like J Dilla, MF DOOM, and De La Soul ‘placing them in psychedelic, otherworldly settings where fantasy, history, and rhythm collide’. Egostrip Book 1 was published in 2020 and Egostrip Book 2 in 2023. See Lish’s Instagram account for more pics.

Des Marshall - urban Robinson Crusoe

‘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.’

15 February 1996

‘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. [. . .]’

Curfew ends prom parade

‘The 10:30 p.m curfew is most effective along the front. Last night between 10:30 and 11 o’clock I counted two naval officers, one private, one mother and son, and a white bull terrier. That was all. The night porter at my hotel ruefully told me that last year there were 152 people staying at this hotel. Yesterday there were 12. In peace time, he said, even at Easter, there would have been 400 or 500 couples sleeping on the beach near the Palace Pier.’ This is from an article in the Daily Mail by Charles Graves published on this day in 1941. Graves, a London based reporter, ran a regular column during the war years (inc. during the Blitz) called I See Life, mostly about life in the city, but occasionally he travelled further afield. 

A very interesting and largely forgotten writer, Graves was born in London in 1899, son of the Anglo-Irish poet and songwriter Alfred Perceval Graves. One of his brothers, a literary writer, Robert, would become famous, notably for The White Goddess. Charles was educated at Charterhouse, and then joined the Royal Fusiliers but was still in training at the time of the WWI Armistice. He studied at St John’s College, Oxford University, and joined the staff of the Evening News as a reporter. Soon he was also the paper’s theatre critic, a line of work that enabled him to engage with London’s high society. He moved on, to the Sunday Express, where he worked variously as columnist, news editor and feature writer. In 1927, he switched again, this time to be a columnist with the Daily Mail.

During WW2, he continued to write for the paper but also to socialise - he was out at restaurants and the theatre whenever possible. He was an active participant in the Home Guard, and he wrote and read propaganda scripts for the BBC. In addition, he spent time at RAF bases and with RAF personnel so as to write novels - such as The Thin Blue Line and The Avengers - promoting the armed services.

Among Graves’ many books (more than 50) are four diaries from the war years. They are of particular interest because they include much detail about Graves’ Home Guard activities. Personal writing about the Home Guard was specifically made illegal (for security reasons). In 2011, Viking published a book called The Real ‘Dad’s Army’ - The War Diaries of Lt.Col. Rodney Foster with great fanfare claiming it was the first such Home Guard diary to be published. But the long-since forgotten diaries by Charles Graves should claim that distinction.

Here, though, after a trip to Brighton, is the piece Graves published in his I See Life column on 14 April 1941. (Photo credits: National Portrait Gallery website, and a screenshot of an I See Life piece from Alamy Images.)

Curfew Ends Prom Parade

‘This has been a strange weekend for Brighton. Never since the days of the Regency have there been so few visitors. The ban on Brighton as a pleasure resort, together with the 10:30 p.m. curfew, has had marked results.

It is true that when I entered the town on Thursday nobody asked me for any pass. 

On the other hand, I was twice stopped when in a motor-coach on Friday and Saturday by policemen who asked for my identity cards and response for being in the neighbourhood.

On the second occasion I was returning to Brighton from Lewes and the sergeant informed me that if had not possessed valid reasons (in writing) for my presence I would have been taken off the motor-coach, sent back to Lewes, and returned in disgrace to London - with my suit-case still in Brighton.

The 10:30 p.m curfew is most effective along the front. Last night between 10:30 and 11 o’clock I counted two naval officers, one private, one mother and son, and a white bull terrier. That was all. The night porter at my hotel ruefully told me that last year there were 152 people staying at this hotel. Yesterday there were 12. In peace time, he said, even at Easter, there would have been 400 or 500 couples sleeping on the beach near the Palace Pier.

Another effect of the ban is that the enterprise of the touts for the motor-coach rides is accentuated. They all tell you pleadingly that their particular excursion goes through far the loveliest scenery of Sussex, and that though the price of 3s, it is worth every penny of 4s or even more.’

The Infamous John Friend

‘The vivid green, the well kept turf of the Steine contrasted with the bright rust coloured meshes of the fishermen’s nets spread over its seaward end to dry; picturesque fishing boats were drawn up on the shingle of the beach; children were paddling and digging in the sand.’ This is from The Infamous John Friend, a historical novel by Martha Roscoe Garnett partly set in Brighton. As a Jacobite sympathiser, the title character becomes entangled in political intrigue. [This image is courtesy of Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove]

Born in 1869, Martha was a British author and biographer, known for her literary contributions during the early 20th century. She is largely forgotten today, and there is very little biographical information about her available online. She married Richard Garnett, a writer and librarian at the British Museum, and she was related, by her marriage, Constance Garnett, a renowned translator of Russian literature, and Olive Garnett, another author.

Martha Garnett wrote two other novels: Amor Vincit (1912), a romance of the Staffordshire moorlands; and, Unrecorded: A Tale of the Days of Chivalry (1931). In addition to her fiction, she published Samuel Butler and His Family Relations (1926), showcasing her interest in historical and biographical writing. She died in 1946, aged 77.

The Infamous John Friend, first published in 1909, is set in 1805 during the Napoleonic Wars and follows John Friend, a spy working for Napoleon. The novel begins with John Friend at home, where his wife Mary is seriously ill. The story then moves to Brighton, where Friend takes his family, including his young daughter Susan, for a change of scenery and to improve his wife’s health.

Brighton Beach can be seen to play a significant role in the story as it serves as the backdrop for several key events and character interactions. The seaside town is described vividly, with mentions of bathing machines and Martha Gunn, and the social atmosphere of the time. Brighton’s popularity as a fashionable resort town during the Regency era is evident in the novel's portrayal of the setting.

An American edition of the novel can be freely read online at Internet Archive. Here is an extract from the novel, from chapter II (‘At Brighton’).

‘But the usual tenor of their life was that of the quieter professional classes; and now it appeared that they were to launch into fashionable life. Friend himself was quite unchanged. He was always the same in all surroundings and with all conditions of men. He took Susan out for a walk in the morning, eager for her first view of the sea. Mrs Friend was keeping her room after the fatigues of the journey. It was a different scene indeed from the Brighton of our day. The landscape was all Downs and sea; the little town dominated by its square towered church clustered among hayfields and cornfields. But rows of houses were beginning to spread like extended fingers among the fields, and the roads showed signs of traffic beyond the uses of country lanes. Over at Hove the white tents of the military camp shone in the sun, and glimpses of scarlet and flashes of burnished metal occasionally struck the eye. But the great glittering plain of the sea absorbed all Susan’s attention. She had no eyes for the streets, delightfully clean after the filth of London, nor for the sunshine glowing on the red brick pavements and working color harmonies between them and the dappled grey flint work of the walls. The vivid green, the well kept turf of the Steine contrasted with the bright rust colored meshes of the fishermen’s nets spread over its seaward end to dry; picturesque fishing boats were drawn up on the shingle of the beach; children were paddling and digging in the sand. A row of bathing machines stood in the shallow water, while stalwart females, gowned in faded indigo blue serge, were standing waist deep in the sea and “dipping” the ladies and children who entrusted themselves to their care.’

Crow’s toes gripped the wet pebbles

Crow on the Beach

Hearing shingle explode, seeing it skip,

Crow sucked his tongue.

Seeing sea-grey mash a mountain of itself

Crow tightened his goose-pimples.

Feeling spray from the sea’s root nothinged on his crest

Crow’s toes gripped the wet pebbles.

When the smell of the whale’s den, the gulfing of the crab’s last prayer,

Gimletted in his nostril

He grasped he was on earth.

He knew he grasped

Something fleeting

Of the sea’s ogreish outcry and convulsion.

He knew he was the wrong listener unwanted

To understand or help -

His utmost gaping of his brain in his tiny skull

Was just enough to wonder, about the sea,

What could be hurting so much?

This is Ted Hughes, one of the most influential British poets of the 20th century, known for his stark, elemental imagery and exploration of nature, violence, and myth. Born in Yorkshire, England, he became Poet Laureate in 1984 and was widely recognized for collections like The Hawk in the Rain and Birthday Letters. His work often delved into the primal forces of life, influenced by folklore, shamanism, and a deep reverence for the natural world.

Although there is no specific connection between Hughes and Brighton, this photograph of a crow on the Brighton pebbles seemed to lead me directly to Hughes’s poems. Crow on the Beach, as above, comes from Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow, published by Faber & Faber in 1970 (which can be freely borrowed online at Internet Archive). 

The collection is considered a pivotal work in Hughes’s career, marking a shift towards a darker, more fragmented style. It was originally conceived as part of a collaboration with the American artist Leonard Baskin and reflects Hughes’s personal grief following the death of his wife, Sylvia Plath. Crow is said to present a chaotic, amoral trickster figure that challenges religious and existential narratives, embodying survival, destruction, and rebirth. See the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography for a more detailed analysis of the work. Meanwhile, here is another poem from the collection.

Crow and the Sea

He tried ignoring the sea

But it was bigger than death, just as it was bigger than life.

He tried talking to the sea

But his brain shuttered and his eyes winced from it as from open flame.

He tried sympathy for the sea

But it shouldered him off - as a dead thing shoulders you off.

He tried hating the sea

But instantly felt like a scrutty dry rabbit-dropping on the windy cliff.

He tried just being in the same world as the sea

But his lungs were not deep enough

And his cheery blood banged off it

Like a water-drop off a hot stove.

Finally

He turned his back and he marched away from the sea

As a crucified man cannot move.

I have bathed so often

One of Brighton’s earliest literary visitors was Frances ‘Fanny’ Burney, later known as Madame d’Arblay. She first arrived in the early 1780s, at a time when sea bathing was becoming a popular remedy for health ailments. She became a famous novelist, but was also an inveterate letter writer and diary keeper. Indeed, today she is best remembered for her diaries which were first published in seven volumes. Curiously, although she tells her diary in 1982, ‘I have bathed so often as to lose my dread of the operation’, in all those volumes I can only find one significant reference to Brighton beach and seaside.

Burney was born in 1752 at King’s Lynn, Norfolk, the daughter of Charles Burney, a musician and man of letters. The family moved to London in 1760, where Charles was part of a busy literary circle. Fanny was a precocious child (although her mother died when she was just 10). She was educated at home with the help of her father’s extensive library and of his friends, in particular Samuel Crisp who encouraged her to write journal-letters, in which she carefully reported on the social world around her family. And, it was writing of this ilk that led to her first novel, Evelina, published anonymously when she was only 26.

Evelina was an instant success and led London society to speculate on the identity of the writer - widely assumed to be a man. The Burney Centre biography says Fanny ‘became the first woman to make writing novels respectable’. With Evelina, it adds, she created a new school of fiction in English - a ‘comedy of manners’ - one in which women in society were portrayed in realistic, contemporary circumstances. This new genre would later pave the way for Jane Austen and other 19th century writers. Meanwhile, once discovered as the author of Evelina, Burney was taken up by literary and high society, in particular she became very friendly with the Thrales and Dr Johnson, and would often stay at the Brighton house of the Thrales in West Street.

In 1786, Burney was appointed Second Keeper of the Robes to Queen Charlotte, wife of George III. This position took her to Brighton where the King decamped for health reasons. But she was not happy in court, and was allowed to resign in 1791. Not long after, she married the French emigré Alexandre d’Arblay, and they had one son. She died in 1840. More information is available at Brighton Museums and The Burney Centre.

Burney left behind a rich literary estate of diaries and letters. Heavily edited versions of these were published in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but it wasn’t until Joyce Hemlow published her landmark biography, The History of Fanny Burney, in 1958 that the full impact of Burney’s contribution to literature and letters began to be better appreciated. All seven volumes of the original Diary and Letters of Madame d’Arblay, edited by her niece and published by Henry Colburn in 1842, are available online at Internet Archive. For information on the more recent Complete Scholarly Edition by Hemlow see Oxford University Press.

Burney first visited Brighton in 1779. Here is a brief diary extract written during that visit.

26 May 1779

‘The road from Streatham hither is beautiful: Mr., Mrs., Miss Thrale, and Miss Susan Thrale, and I, travelled in a coach, with four horses, and two of the servants in a chaise, besides two men on horseback; so we were obliged to stop for some time at three places on the road.

We got home by about nine o’clock. Mr. Thrale's house is in West Street, which is the court end of the town here, as well as in London. ’Tis a neat, small house, and I have a snug comfortable room to myself. The sea is not many yards from our windows. Our journey was delightfully pleasant, the day being heavenly, the roads in fine order, the prospects charming, and everybody good-humoured and cheerful.’

And here is a diary entry from three years later - Burney’s only significant mention of the beach and swimming (at least that I can find).

20 November 1782

‘Mrs and the three Miss Thrales and myself all arose at six o’clock in the morning, and ‘by the pale blink of the moon’ we went to the sea-side, where we had bespoke the bathing-women to be ready for us, and into the ocean we plunged. It was cold, but pleasant. I have bathed so often as to lose my dread of the operation, which now gives me nothing but animation and vigour.’

In view of this latter comment by Burney, it is somewhat curious that she doesn’t mention Brighton’s beach or bathing elsewhere. When I asked ChatGPT why this might be, it proposed the following reasons.

1) Burney, like many women of her era, maintained a degree of propriety in her writings. Sea-bathing, particularly for women, involved being physically handled by ‘dippers’ and experiencing an undignified immersion in the sea. She may have found the experience too embarrassing or indelicate to describe in detail. 2) While Brighton was famous for its sea-bathing, Burney’s letters suggest she was more interested in its social scene - the promenades, assemblies, and court gatherings. 3) Once she became accustomed to bathing, she may not have considered it remarkable enough to record further. 4) References to bathing were removed by editors if they were deemed too trivial or personal.

(The photograph of bathing machines above is a detail from a larger image found in Victorian and Edwardian Brighton from old photographs by John Betjeman and J. S. Gray published by Batsford 1972.)