My only literary prize

In the early 1990s, I took part in a Brighton Festival writing workshop on the famous novel Brighton Rock. It was an interesting experience, if a little disappointing. The workshop included entry to a short story competition with a £50 prize, and I duly entered. On this day, in 1992, I received notification that I’d won the competition and the £50 - it remains the only literary prize I’ve ever won. But, at the time, I was convinced - as my diary reveals - that I must have been the only entrant. Here is the story of that prize - in two extracts from my diaries.

4 May 1992

‘Friday saw the opening of the Brighton festival with a splendid procession of children and their school-made dragons. For the whole of Saturday, I’d signed up for a Brighton Rock workshop but I had little idea what it would be like. I dutifully arrived on the Palace Pier a little before 10 and took a couple of pictures - the light was astonishingly bright and clear and the pier furbishings were looking as spanking new and clean as I’ve seen them; they must have had a coat of paint within the last few weeks and the glass in the windows had been spotlessly cleaned.

At 10 exactly, I approached the tiny group of people in the centre of the pavement at the entrance to the pier. The literature event organiser was there holding a wad of tickets; there was a large well-built man of around 50 introduced to me as Tony Masters who I didn’t know from Adam; otherwise there were two other punters like me - Jake, a dead ringer in character and pretensions for my old flatmate Andy, and Bob. Masters, who turned out to be quite a well known and prolific writer, never really recovered from the fact that so few people had signed up

We removed to a banquet suite in the Albion Hotel where Tony talked a while about his working methods, about Brighton Rock (he had known Graham Greene) and about what we were going to do during the day - i.e. a walk in the morning and writing session in the afternoon. 

I suppose I too was disappointed that the turnout was so small. The walk was certainly a disappointment - we walked up and down the pier, passed the Forte’s cafe on the corner directly opposite the pier which was the setting for Snow’s. Tony insisted it would have been more sleazy in the time Greene researched the book but I thought otherwise - Rose says she couldn’t get another job as good and I suspect it was quite posh then, even more so than now. Tony said the same thing about the pier and the Albion hotel (where Greene stayed when in Brighton) but again I would have thought the pier would have been quite rich in those days given the amount of visitors it used to get. Our resident writer seemed determined to impose the sense of sleaze and squalidness that exudes out of the whole book on all the locations. We then walked up to Nelson Place which is where Pinkie grew up and where Rose’s parents live. Tony seemed to insist he could really feel ‘a sense of place’ (the title of the workshop) in this location but I didn’t get anything from it all. 

For a while we sat in the pub Dr Brighton’s which in the book and formerly was the Star and Garter where Ida was often found. I suppose I knew Brighton too well already. There are dozens of locations around the city which have real character and feeling but, the pier apart, we didn’t go near any of them. After a short break for lunch we retired to the same room in the hotel. It became clear that Tony has a lot of experience of such workshops - he has worked a lot in schools it seems and written a lot for children - and was determined to maintain a highly positive attitude and wring something out of us. We had five minutes to write down the bone of an idea based on any inspiration we had had on the walk; then we were given a bit less than an hour to actually write up the idea.

Apart from general thoughts about the gaudiness of the attractions on the pier and the similarity perhaps with Brighton itself in some respects, three pictures on the pier had struck me: the sight of a lanky youth, standing silent and motionless staring at a video machine; a small boy who refused to walk over the slats of the pier because he could see water below and chose instead to walk along the boards laid down for pushchairs; and the colour of the sea - a translucent turquoise which seemed to have a light source of its own - as spotted between the slats when walking through a covered part of the pier.

Pressed into creating a story line and taking my cue from a simple example put forward by Tony himself, I turned the youth into a rather lonely character yet to leave home, addicted to the video machines, his only pleasure, and on the edge of making an important decision in his life. I have him watching the small boy choose the safe path over the boards and seeing himself. A group of lively youngsters enter the amusement arcade and stand near the youth. He starts thinking about how he has never met people like this and so on. I was surprised how much I actually wrote in the short space of time but I suppose that’s my experience as a journalist showing through. Although Tony insisted that one should not enclose one’s characters into a finished plot and allow them room, I had sewn up my plot before I began writing. Tony said all one needs is to be able to see four or five scenes ahead (have a narrative thrust) and then one can write. Well, I couldn’t do this, I had already found the end to my story viz: the group of lively youngsters tease the youth and eventually nag him to come along with them for a bit. The first thing they do is go up the helter skelter. The youth, tied up in the imaginary world of the video games, has never actually been on any of the fairground rides and he is frightened sick of going to the top of the helter skelter and sliding down round virtually over the sea. Moreover, he has to spend his last coin of the day. The story finishes as he begins his slide down - a symbol really that he must begin his real life.

Pretty crass eh! Well, what can one do in 45 minutes. Jake wrote three sentences in Tom Wolfe style about a film star (Cher-like) who has come to Brighton to film a few scenes but falls over on the pier and is going to have an affair with a young street-wise lad. Bob also wrote just a few words about a tailor’s shop he’d seen. They were highly descriptive and emotive even and promised well.

We talked for an hour or so about these attempts. Jake found my writing Kafkaesque, Bob liked it and Tony explained that I wrote rather economically without much description, that I didn’t waste words. He said whereas from Bob’s contribution he could touch the scene, with mine he got a strong visual sense. I don’t think he made any judgement as to whether it was any good or not, nor can I think of anything he said that might actually help me write the story better. Oh yes, he said I was very observant.

The cost of the workshop also includes the chance to send in a story (max 3,000 words) to the organisers who will then award a £50 prize as well as provide some constructive criticism. I shall certainly take advantage of that offer. If just three people turn up at the second of the two workshops and every participant sends in a story, I would still have a 15% chance of winning the prize!

I have to say that I liked Tony and found myself very much on his wavelength - I could tell in advance what pictures he might point out (at one point he was saying that one was unlikely to meet a Pinkie character these days but just at that moment two punks passed us in the street and we both acknowledged the irony of that) - and I could agree with much of what he said about other writers and films. At over 50, he has been a writer for thirty years he said, and is clearly much in demand, for films and television, and also pushes out a lot of books. I suppose if I were ever to be a writer, I would want to have as varied a portfolio as this man.’

5 August 1992

‘ “I am delighted,” Adrian Slack, organiser of the literature part of the Brighton Festival, writes, “to inform you that you have won first prize in the short story competition. I enclose a cheque for £50”. Well, well, well. My first ever literature success. Well, it would be if I wasn’t reasonably sure that I was probably the only entrant. Shame I didn’t get second and third prize as well. The story - Helter Skelter - was supposed to be read by several judges and a critique provided, that might have been more useful than the £50 prize.’

A tremendious rough day

‘This has been a tremendious rough day. I never saw anything half so grand as the sea looked. Indeed, there cannot be a grander sight than a rough sea. It looked like a large hilly plain, moor than like a piece of water. The waves rolled mountains high, and when two of these waves met, sometimes it was with such violence that the water flew into the air out of sight, foaming and frothing like a boiling furnace.’ This was written today in 1937 by William Tayler, a servant and footman on holiday in Brighton with his employer. Despite bad spelling, his observations on Brighton Beach - written down in a diary - are all the more precious an historical record because of his relatively low status.

Born in 1807, Tayler grew up with many siblings on a farm in Grafton, Oxfordshire. He was the first of his family to go into gentlemen’s service, initially for a local squire, and then for a wealthy widow in London, a Mrs Prinsep who lived in Marylebone. Also in the household was the widow’s daughter, and three maidservants - he was the only manservant. Mrs Prinsep died in 1850, and William moved his employment several times thereafter, rising to butler, and eventually being able to afford to rent a whole house in Paddington.

At the beginning of 1837, Tayler decided to keep a diary, to practise his writing.

1 January 1837

‘As I am a wretched bad writer, many of my friends have advised me to practise more, to do which I have made many attempts but allways forgot or got tired so that it was never atended to. I am now about to write a sort of journal, to note down some of the chief things that come under my observation each day. This, I hope, will induce me to make use of my pen every day a little. My account of each subject will be very short - a sort of multo in parvo - as my book is very small and my time not very large.’

And for the rest of the year, almost every day, he wrote short entries. The manuscript was first edited by Dorothy Wise and published - with the title Diary of William Tayler, Footman, 1837 - by the St Marylebone Society in 1962, but has been reprinted several times since then. There are extensive quotes from Tayler’s diary in my book, Brighton in Diaries (History Press, 2011) including the following:

18 July 1837

‘Went on the pier. This is a kind of bridge brojecting into the sea a quarter of a mile. It’s a great curiosity as it’s hung on chains. People can get from that into the boats without going into the water at low water.’ (Picture credit: Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove.)

19 July 1837

‘I get up every morning at half past six and goes out on the beach looking at the boys catching crabs and eels and looking at the people batheing. There are numbers of old wimen have little wooden houses on wheels, and into these houses people goe that want to bathe, and then the house is pushed into the water and when the person has undressed, they get into the water and bathe, and then get into the wooden house again and dress themselves, then the house is drawn on shore again.’

29 July 1837

‘This has been a tremendious rough day. I never saw anything half so grand as the sea looked. Indeed, there cannot be a grander sight than a rough sea. It looked like a large hilly plain, moor than like a piece of water. The waves rolled mountains high, and when two of these waves met, sometimes it was with such violence that the water flew into the air out of sight, foaming and frothing like a boiling furnace, and the wind blows a mist from the waves that regularly pickle the streets, houses and everybody and everything from the salt water. It’s ruination to clothes. My hat is as white as though I had rolled it in the salt tub. The fishermen nor no one elce dare got out with boats such weather. Many of the people were obliged to put up their shutters for fear of haveing their windows broke by the wind blowing the stones and gravel about. I have seen many wimen with their peticoats over their heads. Most of them keep at home, and it would be as well if they was all to do so such a day as this.’

5 August 1837

‘The water very rough. A man rideing his horse in to wash it, the waves came and knocked them man and horse both down in the water. They both scrambled up again and got out, but the man lost his money.’

12 August 1837

‘Went by the water’s side and saw some fishermen bring a very curious fish ashore. They called it a sea monster. It was as big as a donkey and about eight feet long and a mouthfull of teeth like a lion. They erected a tent and showed it for a trifle each person.  They often catch some of these creatures which are of no use other than make a show of, as long as they can keep them fresh.’

Hazel by the sea

Forgive this lapse into the personal but today the most important event occurring across the whole length of Brighton Beach has been a visit by Hazel, Hazel Lyons, my first and most beautiful granddaughter. In keeping with recent family tradition she was carried across the pebbles to be as near to the water as possible and there given a secular blessing on her forehead. As it happens, Hazel is 74 days old today, and I am 74 years old.

I have three sons. Adam is the oldest, born back in 1987. He married Greta last year, and Hazel was born in March (it is her visit to Brighton today, and to the beach, that has moved me to fill this blog post with family photographs). I got together with Hattie in 2007, and we’ve had two boys, JG and Albert, born in 2009 and 2011 respectively. Both were taken to the sea when only a few weeks old - here are my diary entries from those moments.

9 January 2009

‘It was the most beautiful day, the sun shining and brilliant, the sea blue, and the air less cold than of late. Once there, we all three went on to the pebbles, and [. . .] then I took you down to the sea, and dipped your tiny hand in the water, and after that your mother and I crossed some sea water on your forehead and named you Jake Gordon Lyons.’

19 July 2011

‘Today, JG being at nursery, and the weather being fine, we three [Hat, Albert and myself] all cycled down to the beach. This was Hat’s first time on the beach since Albert was born; it was Albert’s first time ever on the beach; it was also the first time he’d travelled with me on the bicycle. There weren’t many people on the beach. I had a swim, and then we took Albert down to the water line, where only gentle waves were lapping, and we baptised him, with a little sprinkle of sea water on his forehead, naming him Albert Zorro Gordon Lyons. Hat took some photos to mark occasion.’

25 May 2025

‘Hazel is such a joy, happy and alert, eyes wide and blue, smiling. After lunch we all bussed down to the seafront, Albert and I sharing pram-pushing duties. Hazel remained asleep as we carried the pushchair across the pebbles, and we let her sleep for a while, but I was keen to take her down to the water, and snap a few photos. She was as calm as could be when I gently woke her and lifted her into my arms. The tide was out so we needed to stand on the sand to get near the water line. Albert asked me if I was going to wet a cross on Hazel’s forehead, I said I was. He suggested instead that I do a smiley face, but Adam and I said he should do it - which he did.’

Charles II and Pepys on the quarterdeck

23 May 1660: the day Brighton made its first appearance in a diary (albeit not by name), and not just any diary, but THE diary - the one kept by Samuel Pepys, the most famous diarist in the English language. That day, aboard a ship bringing Charles II back from exile to claim the throne, Pepys listened spellbound as the King paced the quarterdeck, recounting a harrowing escape that had taken him - nearly a decade earlier - through the Sussex coast and within a pebble’s toss of Brighton Beach.

Pepys’ journal entry for that day overflows with drama. The King and a retinue of royals had boarded the fleet in the Netherlands, greeted with ‘infinite shooting off of the guns.’ The King, rather than playing the aloof monarch, surprised Pepys by walking ‘up and down,’ full of energy, and launching into vivid stories of his flight from the Battle of Worcester in 1651.

After the Royalist defeat at Worcester, Charles II was a fugitive in his own country. Hiding in priest holes, haylofts, and famously in an oak tree at Boscobel, he eluded capture for six weeks. Travelling in disguise, he trudged through mud ‘with nothing but a green coat and a pair of country breeches,’ his feet rubbed raw by peasant shoes. His journey led him through Sussex, staying in Arundel and Beeding, and then - on 14 October - to ‘another place’. Although not named, the place was certainly Brighthelmstone, as Brighton was then called.

According to the King’s own account, recorded by Pepys in a later narrative, he met his escape vessel’s captain, Nicholas Tettersell, at an inn - most likely The George in Middle Street. The ship lay waiting at Shoreham. Although Tettersell recognised Charles immediately (‘he is the king, and I very well know him’), he agreed to help, later earning a royal pension and the honour of having his ship, Surprise, renamed The Royal Escape.

There, in that Brighton inn, surrounded by loyalists and strangers alike, Charles drank beer, smoked tobacco, and gambled that he could trust the landlord - who quietly knelt and kissed his hand. At 4 am, they rode to Shoreham and boarded the small vessel. As Charles later told it, he lay low in the cabin until the tide rose enough to carry them across the Channel to safety.

That same escape would later inspire two commemorations: the 615-mile Monarch’s Way long-distance footpath tracing his route from Worcester to Shoreham, and the annual Royal Escape Race - a modern yacht event retracing his dash to France.

So what of Pepys? His diary began on New Year’s Day 1660 and ran for nine momentous years. He was aboard the ship that day not just as a chronicler, but as part of the Admiralty team. That his journal should contain Brighton’s earliest known diary mention seems fitting, given his flair for blending personal anecdote with sweeping historical detail. He wrote of that 23 May - 365 years ago today - ‘The King . . . fell into discourse of his escape from Worcester . . . made me ready to weep to hear the stories that he told. . .’

[This article was largely sourced from my book Brighton in Diaries (History Press, 2011). The topmost picture was created using Bing, and the lower picture is a copy of a 1911 print - Samuel Pepys and King Charles II - by Robert Spence found on the website of The Australian National Gallery of Victoria.]

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)

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. [. . .]’

Five years since Covid-19 hit Brighton

It is five years to the day since the first confirmed case of a coronavirus was registered in Brighton. Five days later the virus was officially named Covid-19 by the World Health Organisation. On 9 March, only eight persons in Brighton & Hove had been confirmed as contracting the virus. On 23 March the government announced a widespread lock down regulated by fairly draconian rules. Though the news hardly connected directly with Brighton Beach, the fact is that we - my wife and two children - navigated sanely through lock down largely thanks to daily early-morning trips to the pebbles.

In 2021, the Argus published an article reflecting back on the start of it all.

‘Today marks one year since the first confirmed case of coronavirus in Brighton and Hove. On 6 February 2020, the government announced that a British national had contracted the disease. About an hour later, it was established the patient was from Brighton.

For most, the virus was nothing more than worrying news reports from China - images of medical personnel in hazmat suits dousing down Wuhan’s streets with disinfectant. But, a few days later, those jarring images were being taken in the city. Footage appeared of a bio-hazard technician as he cleared the County Oak Medical Centre. The Carden Hill GP practice had been closed because of an ‘urgent operational health and safety reason’. Soon after, another coronavirus case was confirmed to be a Brighton and Hove resident and the story exploded. National and international media descended on the city, asking whether the country was ready for a pandemic as further cases were confirmed. The city became the nation’s opening fight with the virus. It was a first-glimpse of the UK’s battle with Covid-19, which has now claimed more than 100,000 lives across the nation.’

Later, it was established that the virus had not been passed to anyone in the city at the time, but that four individuals had caught the virus from in the French Alps. Moreover, the Argus reported: ‘The diligence of the so-called “super spreader” who promptly identified himself as a potential virus patient, as well as the track-and-trace efforts from Public Health England, had saved the city from becoming the centre of an epidemic. The Lombardy region in Italy would soon prove how devastating a localised outbreak of the virus can be.’

The five photos above are of my family at roughly monthly intervals. The first one - on the left - was taken two days after lock down, as some kind of spontaneous response to Covid-19. I’m not sure why I staged it - and the subsequent photos - in that way, though it’s likely I wanted to landmark the astonishing and deadly turn of events suddenly impacting all our lives. 

Here are two entries from my personal diary.

11 February 2020

‘The Coronavirus, now officially called Covid-19, continues to cause headlines, and particularly here in Brighton, as this city has become the British hotbed for the virus. Two surgeries have been closed, and several schools have reported that some individuals are self-isolating. As yet, there doesn’t seem to have been a case that was actually contracted in this country, but it’s early days. Some tens of thousands of people have been infected, and over a thousand have died. But, equally, there are thousands dying from ordinary flu across the world, and it’s quite difficult to keep a sense of perspective. At present, it seems every individual who gets the virus in this country is being tracked, and helped, but we’re talking a dozen or so cases, what happens when hundreds and thousands have the disease, then it’s no longer containable, and everyone must take pot luck.’

Saturday 18 April 2020

‘Half of humanity under social distancing curbs’ reads one headline this morning. Another, more local and of intense interest to us, reads ‘Coronavirus: Brighton council closes Madeira Drive to cars’. Most likely this will bring an end to our early morning jaunts to the beach. We’ve had four weeks of near-daily visits to the seafront, during which I’ve done my yoga exercises, Hat has exercised or run, and the boys have practised skateboarding and football. I might try to find alternative parking - on Marine Parade perhaps - but even if I do we’re going to be spending 10-15 minutes walking either way, and there won’t be a place to skateboard or football probably. Alas. The Council says it’s proud to be taking this action, aimed at giving those doing exercise more space - i.e. along the road as well as the pavement (which is already one of the widest in the city).’

Arnold Bennett in Brighton

Here is Arnold Bennett, the most successful British author of the early 20th century, writing in his diary exactly 115 years ago today.

3 February 1910

‘The other morning I watched the sea-gulls helping the scavenger to scavenge the remains of the daily fish market on the beach. Rain. Strong wind. They could not alight. They had a lot of balancing and steering to do. They dived again and again for the same bit of offal, missing it, till they got it. Then each prize-winner sailed off against the wind with difficulty towards the Palace Pier, and out of my sight somewhere; but some seemed to swallow the piece en route. I was watching them alight in the water the other day; all did exactly the same; a planing descent, then, close on water, 2 or 3 half-flaps, a raising of the head, and they were afloat.’

Bennett was born into a large family in Hanley, Staffordshire, in 1867. Aged 16, he left school to work for his solicitor father, but in 1889, he escaped to London where an interest in journalism led him to become an editor, and then editor-in-chief, of a magazine called Woman. His debut novel - A Man from the North - was published in 1898, and gave him sufficient confidence, a couple of years later, to give up his day job and become a full-time writer. 

From the outset, Bennett adopted an unmistakable style, aligned to the French realists, aiming to depict a real and gritty - rather than romantic - view of life, with all its everyday and banal activities, not least when connected with poor social conditions. At the turn of the century, he moved to Paris, then buzzing with literary and artistic talent, where he stayed for the best part of a decade. During this time he met and married Marie Marguerite Soulié. 

In early 1910, Bennett and Soulié stayed for a few winter months in Brighton at the Royal Albion Hotel as the guest of its flamboyant proprietor Sir Harry Preston. Bennet had done all his research for a new book, to be called Clayhanger, and he used his time in Brighton to write most it, averaging about 1,000 words a day. The novel was published before the end of the same year, and, by early 1911, he was writing a sequel, Hilda Lessways, part of which would be set in Brighton.

Bennett’s authorial skills were put to use during the war, by the end of which he was in charge of propaganda in France. He separated from his wife in 1921, and the following year became involved with Dorothy Cheston, an actress, who bore him a daughter. Though he continued to churn out novels, their critical reputation declined during the 1920s, his literary style coming to be seen as old-fashioned. Nevertheless, his non-fiction was much sought after, and he was famously the highest paid literary journalist in England, with a weekly column in the Evening Standard. He caught typhoid on a trip to France and died in 1931.

Bennett began keeping a diary in 1896, and continued to the end of his life. The excellent journals, which were inherited by Dorothy Cheston, are said to contain over a million words. They were edited by Newman Flower and published in three volumes by Cassell in 1932-1933, titled The Journals of Arnold Bennett 1896-1928. In his introduction, Flower says Bennett’s diaries show him in the manner of a modern Pepys; elsewhere, though, they are considered to have been inspired by the famous French diaries of Edmond and Jules De Goncourt, themselves very influential in the realist/naturalist movement.

Here is another extract from Bennett’s diary written in Brighton.

5 January 1910

‘This morning at 9:45 I began to write ‘Clayhanger’. I felt less nervous and self-conscious than usual in beginning a book. And never before have I made one-quarter so many preliminary notes and investigations. I went out for a little recess, and at 1:30 I had done 1,000 words, which was very good for a first day.

We went to the Aquarium after tea, and heard mediocre music, and saw first-rate fishes, etc., living long under highly artificial conditions. The seals and alligators seemed to be intensely bored and sick of life, but perhaps they weren’t. Then I came back and wrote half an article for the ‘Nation’ about the Hanley music-hall.

Earlier in the afternoon I went out and viewed the shore, and the launching of fishing boats. All kinds of activity in progress, spoiling to be described. But now that I am on my novel I am tied up again for six months from anything really swagger in the way of description.

Weather misty. No visible round trace of the sun. The hotel is haunted by barrel organs. In fact in various ways Brighton seems to be what London was. Its architecture is old Belgravia and Tyburnian.’

And, finally, here is an extract about Brighton not from the diaries but from Bennett’s novel Hilda Lessways:

‘The putting-on of brakes took her unawares. The train was in Brighton, sliding over the outskirts of the town. . . Hilda saw steep streets of houses that sprawled on the hilly mounds of the great town like ladders: reminiscent of certain streets of her native district, yet quite different, a physiognomy utterly foreign to her. This, then, was Brighton. That which had been a postmark became suddenly a reality, shattering her preconceptions of it, and disappointing her she knew not why. She glanced forward, through the window, and saw the cavern of the station. . .

Her first disappointment changed slowly into expectant and hopeful curiosity. The quaint irregularities of the architecture, and the vastness of the thronged perspectives, made promises to her romantic sense. The town seemed to be endless as London. There were hotels, churches, chapels, libraries, and music-shops on every hand. The more ordinary features of main streets - the marts of jewellery, drapery, and tobacco - had an air of grandiose respectability; while the narrow alleys that curved enigmatically away between the lofty buildings of these fine thoroughfares beckoned darkly to the fancy. The multiplicity of beggars, louts, and organ-grinders was alone a proof of Brighton’s success in the world; the organ-grinders, often a man and a woman yoked together, were extraordinarily English, genteel, and prosperous as they trudged in their neat, middle-class raiment through the gritty mud of the macadam, stolidly ignoring the menace of high-stepping horses and disdainful glittering wheels. Brighton was evidently a city apart. . .’ 

The caricature of Bennett above (by Oliver Herford in The American Magazine) was sourced at Wikipedia, The book cover here is one of many different editions available at Abebooks.

More about Bennett and his diaries can be found in my book Brighton in Diaries (History Press, 2011)

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