Houdini’s West Pier stunt

The extraordinary escapologist Harry Houdini died 99 years ago today, on 31 October 1926. He appeared several times in Brighton and, on at least one occasion, performed a spectacular stunt from the West Pier. Many years later a young Ronald Cunningham - who would become The Great Omani - came across a second-hand copy of The Secrets of Houdini which inspired him to follow in the master’s footsteps - even to the extent of repeating the same stunt from the West Pier on the fiftieth anniversary of Houdini’s death.

Born Erik Weisz in Budapest in 1874, Houdini rose from vaudeville beginnings to become the world’s most famous escape artist, thrilling crowds with feats of endurance and ingenuity. In December 1904 he topped the bill at the Brighton Hippodrome, and local tradition records that as part of his visit he staged a shackled leap into the Channel from the West Pier, a publicity stunt that packed the promenade with spectators. He remained underwater for close to two minutes before surfacing free of chains.

The only source I can find for this event is a memoir written by Omani. In the memoir, he says he once met a retired theatre electrician, Bert Croyle, who claimed to have worked with Houdini and seen the West Pier stunt. I’ll let Omani tell the tale (from The Crowd Roars, QueenSpark Books, 1998).

Chapter: A salute to Houdini

Once it was my privilege to meet an elderly gentleman in his late seventies, by the name of Bert Croyle. In his early days he had worked in London as head electrician in many of the big variety theatres. He had worked with many famous artists and vaudeville stars of yesterday. Me knew the Ching Ling Soo, who met an untimely death on stage when presenting the ‘catching a ballet in the mouth’ trick. He also knew and had worked with the legendary Great Houdini. He told me that Houdini was a very pleasant and polite man to work with, though conceited and at times very temperamental. But then what great artist isn’t temperamental? 

During his tour of England, it appears Houdini had visited Brighton and had appeared top of the bill at the Brighton Hippodrome. Sadly, like many other theatres, the Hippodrome is now a Bingo Hall. Only the ghosts of yesterday tread the boards to the phantom music of bygone days. One day, Bert Croyle and I were sitting down sipping a glass of wine when he suddenly said. ‘You know. I actually saw Houdini perform his famous death jump from West Pier. This was a publicity stunt to advertise his show at the Brighton Hippodrome. He was handcuffed, chained and padlocked and jumped from the pier into the sea and escaped underwater in about two minutes. The pier was packed. What a showman he was that night. As always with Houdini, the theatre was sold out. I asked Bert how long ago it was that Houdini performed on the West Pier. ‘About fifty years ago,’ he replied. ‘Right,’ I said, you’ve just given me an idea for my next stunt. I will perform Houdini’s jump from where he performed it on the West Pier, with handcuffs and chains, as he performed it fifty years ago. I will present it as a salute to the memory of the world’s all time greatest escapologist.’ 

This was a very good story and I had agreed to sell it to a well known London agency called Features International as an exclusive. The morning before the stunt was due to take place, Bert Croyle and I had an interview with one of the BBC radio stations and we discussed the forthcoming stunt. One question the interviewer asked Bert was ‘Do you think that Omani is as good as Houdini? He has done some amazing things.’ Bert hesitated, turned to me and asked what I thought. ‘Simple,’ I said, ‘Houdini was the greatest of all time. Long after our names are forgotten he will still be a legend.’ ‘You may be right,’ said Bert, ‘but Omani is the best we have got today.’ 

Several years had passed since I had performed on the West Pier. It had changed owners and now belonged to the Métropole Hotel, Brighton. The morning of the stunt arrived and Frank Durham, a director of Features International, and his camera-girl arrived to pick me up at my house. With my suitcase packed with manacles, chains and a pair of bathing trunks, I got into his car and we headed for the West Pier.

On arrival we were in for a shock. A battery of about a dozen cameramen and reporters were waiting for us. A gathering of the media such as one might expect had the rumour got around that Dolly Parton was going to appear topless!’

See also The Great Omani. Picture credits: Wikipedia, Brighton Hippodrome, and ChatGPT.

Deaf Mosaic

The arches along Brighton seafront recently hosted a striking exhibition, Deaf Mosaic, which celebrates deaf culture and the many ways deaf people contribute to society. Created by award-winning photographer Stephen Iliffe, the project brings together 35 portraits of deaf people from all walks of life, each accompanied by their story. The exhibition was on show at the Brighton Seafront Gallery, 54 Kings Road, last September, forming part of Flarewave 2025, a deaf-led arts festival supported by Arts Council England and Brighton & Hove City Council.

Iliffe, who is himself deaf, has worked to challenge stereotypes by rejecting the outdated medical view of deafness and affirming the ‘social model’ instead - that barriers come not from deafness itself but from the structures of hearing society. His work has already been exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery and Kings Cross.

Two of the portraits on display carry a particularly strong connection to the city’s seafront. One features TV chef Scott Garthwaite, better known as Punk Chef, who poses outside his food van with the words ‘Punk Chef’ in bold pink across the windscreen. He recalls that when he first entered the profession, ‘kitchen chefs didn’t see my abilities, only my deafness’. He has since had the last laugh, working in top restaurants and becoming an award-winning television chef. The image is set against the wide horizon of Brighton beach, with the remains of the West Pier visible in the background.

Another portrait shows long-distance swimmer Andrew Rees fresh from the water, with Brighton Palace Pier behind him. Rees, a management accountant, trains by swimming between the two piers, but he is also a Channel veteran. In 2016 he became the first deaf person to swim the 34km from Dover to Calais, enduring gale-force winds, rough seas and shoals of jellyfish. ‘Nothing great is easy’ was his motto, he explains, and after 15 hours in the water he finally made it to France.

Both portraits encapsulate the exhibition’s central message: that with the right support, deaf people can achieve anything. Brighton’s seafront, with its open vistas and historic landmarks, can be viewed as a fitting stage for these affirmations of resilience and talent.

Find the plaques on the pier

Next time you walk out along Brighton Palace Pier, don’t just look up at the rides or out to the sea. Look down. On the edge of the boards beneath your feet runs a discreet line of small brass and bronze plates. They are easy to miss, almost hidden from view, much aged and weathered, but together they form a civic and personal trail stretching the length of the pier.

Most of the plaques are private dedications. For a fee, the pier company would fix them to the decking, allowing families to commemorate loved ones, celebrate weddings, or mark birthdays and anniversaries. This scheme began in the early 2000s as part of the pier’s commercial offer, marketed through the ‘Deck-Squares’ programme. Unlike the large monuments or benches seen elsewhere on the seafront, these tributes are modest and low-lying, forming a quiet memorial gallery where the pier’s fabric becomes the canvas. Scores of them already line the walkway; given the pier’s great length - more than 1,700 feet - the potential runs into the thousands.

In recent years a second strand has joined them. Since 2021 the pier has also carried plaques for winners of the Argus Community Star & Care Awards, the long-running scheme organised by Brighton’s daily newspaper to honour volunteers, carers and community heroes. Categories have included Good Nurse, Mental Health Award, Volunteer of the Year and Local Hero. Usually winners are celebrated at a hotel gala with trophies and publicity, but in partnership with the pier company their names have also been etched into brass and screwed into the decking alongside the private dedications. However, this year, the awards for 2025 have been postponed, with the organisers noting they will advise for 2026.

The effect is curious and rather moving. A memorial to a much-loved grandmother might sit a few feet away from a dedication to a young volunteer recognised for charity work, or a nurse honoured for service in the pandemic. Family affection and civic recognition are absorbed into the same structure, pressed into the pier’s timbers, sharing the same salty air and the same tides below. Together, these plates turn Brighton’s Palace Pier into an accidental archive: part seaside attraction, part public gallery of memory. They are easy to ignore, but once you notice them, you find yourself scanning each one, piecing together fragments of lives and achievements.

Here are my top nine plaques (see also photo montage).

‘In memory of my dear sister Pat who manned the candy floss kiosk throughout the 1953 season’

‘John (Leonard) Scrace 1944 - 2022 Son of Brighton Football Legend (Whitehawk FC) xxx’

‘For our dearest Johnny John Johnny Who always loved the 2p machines and dreamt of winning big. Love you always, Samila, Mish, Miled and family xxx’

‘ADAM JUSTIN BOULTER 11/01/1970 – 03/08/2023 “Au revoir, les Félicieuses.” ’

‘Joss Baker Happy 70th Birthday Brighton Palace Pier, 13.07.25 A magical day of love, laughter and joy shared with family and friends’

‘Jemma and Steve Got engaged on this spot 17th August 2013’

‘In memory of Norman and Jean Foord who met at a dance on the Palace Pier in 1948. Married a year later and settled in Brighton, sharing 65 happy years together.’

‘Celebrating the Life of Raymond Barnard who maintained the pier with love and care’

‘In memory of our mum Elizabeth Oliver who loved Brighton’s casinos 11.01.28 - 28.01.21’

Brighton Beach Scumbags

This day in 1991, Steven Berkoff’s play Brighton Beach Scumbags opened at the Sallis Benney Theatre in Brighton. Directed by George Dillon, it was the inaugural production for the Brighton-based Theatre Events team and quickly gained notoriety for its raw depiction of two East End couples on a seaside outing. The play’s unflinching treatment of casual homophobia, class prejudice and sexual tension caused a stir in the city, while its setting gave Brighton audiences a distorted mirror of their own seafront culture.

Berkoff, born in Stepney in 1937, trained at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art and went on to build a reputation as one of the most distinctive and provocative voices in British theatre. After working in repertory, he founded the London Theatre Group in the 1960s and began writing and performing plays marked by a visceral physicality and a confrontational use of language. Works such as East (1975), West (1980) and Greek (1980) established him as both playwright and performer, while his career on screen brought memorable roles in films such as A Clockwork Orange, Octopussy and Beverly Hills Cop. His stage adaptations of Kafka and his Shakespeare productions have also drawn international acclaim.

Brighton, though, was not just a convenient setting for Scumbags. Berkoff’s own early memories of the town were affectionate. In his memoir Diary of a Juvenile Delinquent (JR Books, 2010) he writes: ‘Now that the war was over we were able to travel and get around a bit. One day Dad rented a car to take us all on a trip to|Brighton and as it drew past the pavilion, I was gobsmacked at my first glance of the deep blue sea; it was also a perfect summer’s day. We were booked into a pleasant, cheap-and-cheerful B&B and the landlords, a young woman and her husband, looked after us really well - so much so that we all wanted to stay a few more days while Dad went back to Luton since he probably had to work (you never knew with him). We walked everywhere in an idyllic post-war [Brighton] played ‘housy-housy’ on the pier and took the miniature Volk’s railway to Black Rock swimming pool. It was a marvellous lido and this was a blissful time in a typical English summer. (Just above Black Rock is the so-elegant Lewes Crescent, where 40 years hence I would be sitting on my own balcony, watching the sunset from the first-floor flat of a splendid Regency house.)’

That mixture of nostalgia and confrontation runs through Brighton Beach Scumbags, premiered on 23 October 1991 (and revived in 2009 by Loft Theatre). The characters revel in their trips to the beach while simultaneously turning it into a stage for crude outbursts, prejudices and fears. A synopsis of the play can be found at the RDG website. The following extract, from Plays 2 (Faber, 1994), captures the tone:

DINAH: Oh yeah, before you come we had a drink ‘cause we always went there you know, always made a bee-line ‘cause you could sit outside, when we courted Derek and I would drink there . . . got the train from Victoria, a quid return, a quid, went swimming by Black Rock, by the cliffs, lovely it was . . . it was then . . .

DEREK: Oh it was a treat, definitely a treat, walk to Rotters, Rottingdean, tea and scones, jam and butter and cream.

DINAH: Sat outside, it was a bit Continental, or we had a plate of fish and chips.

DEREK: Yeah, and we swam cause we loved swimmin then until one day we saw that turd swimmin in the water, well I could never get in there again . . . never.

DINAH: Horrid!

DEREK: Never!

DINAH: Just horrid.

DEREK: I did say at the time that it was probably an isolated turd, not a fucking sign like of sewage seepage, probably a one-off turd by some little bastard who couldn’t hold it, but I never got in there again.

DINAH: Horrid, it just floated past my ear.

DEREK: Before that we’d love a swim, just let the waves grab you and throw you abaht a bit, love it that, triffic, a wave would pick you up like a dog wiv a bone and bung you down again on the shingle, cor didnarf sting at time but it was handsome, then we’d got for a tandoori in the Lanes, triffic place, did a right handsome prawn vindaloo!

Yoga, breath, and spines aligned

For those who like their yoga al fresco, Brighton’s beach offers a mix of weekly classes and one-off events along the seafront, from Hove Lawns to east of Brighton Pier. Local operators list regular outdoor sessions during fair weather, typically switching indoors or cancelling when wind and rain close in. One provider’s current schedule shows Monday morning flows on the pebbles behind the Meeting Point Café, a Thursday evening session on Hove Lawns opposite Brunswick Square, and additional park or seafront slots mid-week. A separate sunrise strand runs weekly through the summer at Rockwater in Hove, with a fallback to the indoor lodge if conditions turn. 

The city’s volunteer-led scene also includes an annual ‘Yoga on the Beach’ day beside the i360, featuring back-to-back classes from local teachers and suggested-donation pricing to raise funds for community wellbeing projects. Tourism listings continue to flag beach and outdoor yoga as a Brighton staple, and commercial platforms are advertising 2025 dates and times, suggesting steady demand for sea-air sessions as autumn sets in. See Brighton Yoga, Studio iO, Brighton Natural Health Foundation; and here’s a ditty to pass the time, by ChatGPT.

Yoga on the pebbles

On Brighton’s stones, the mats are spread,
A stretch of spines, a lift of head.
Gulls keep off - know the score,
Those spiky fences guard this shore.

The pebbles jab, but none complain,
They breathe it out, release the pain.
The sea rolls in with measured tone,
A metronome of waves on stone.

Cobra rises, shoulders tall,
A chorus line along the wall.
The water bottles gleam in rows,
As steadfast as the students’ pose.

The sea rolls in, a patient guide,
It hums its mantra, tide by tide.
So Brighton’s beach becomes a shrine,
For yoga, breath, and spines aligned.

Bombing the Grand

This day in 1984 Brighton endured its worst tragedy since the Second World War. In the early hours of 12 October, the Grand Hotel on the seafront was ripped apart by an IRA bomb planted with the intention of assassinating Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and members of her cabinet during the Conservative Party conference. Five people were killed, more than thirty injured, and the blast left one of the city’s great Victorian landmarks deeply.

The Grand, often described as a ‘palace by the sea’, had been one of Brighton’s most distinguished hotels for more than a century. Designed by John Whichcord Jr and opened in 1864, it was built for the wealthy visitors who flocked to the seaside and boasted innovations such as a hydraulically powered lift - the first of its kind outside London. Over the decades it had hosted royalty, politicians and celebrities, standing as a symbol of elegance and prosperity above the shingle beach - see more history at Wikipedia.

At 2:54 am on 12 October 1984, the device planted by Patrick Magee exploded behind the bath panel of room 629, three weeks after he had checked in under a false name. Thatcher and her husband Denis escaped unharmed, but Norman Tebbit and his wife were among those gravely injured, Margaret Tebbit left paralysed for life. The blast tore through several floors of the building, bringing down stairwells and a chimney stack weighing several tons, while police, fire crews and volunteers fought to pull survivors from the rubble.

Despite the devastation, Thatcher insisted that the conference continue. By morning she stood before delegates to declare that the government would not be deflected by terrorism. The Grand closed for two years of reconstruction and reopened in 1986, but the bombing has remained central to its story. For Brighton, it was the single darkest peacetime event since the Blitz, eclipsing any of the fires, accidents or local disasters the city had endured in the postwar decades. (See also an excerpt from Rory Carroll’s book, Killing Thatcher.)

As for the beach directly opposite, there is no evidence it was formally closed. Accounts recall onlookers gathering along the promenade and sea wall to witness the scene and the rescue effort. The beach itself, calm and indifferent beneath the autumn dawn, provided a stark contrast to the chaos above, a silent backdrop to one of the most shocking moments in Brighton’s modern history.

The 1907 postcard of The Grand is used courtesy of Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove; and the other two images are taken from Wikipedia.

From Bing Crosby to feminism!

On the evening of this day in 1977, Bing Crosby, then 74 and one of the most famous entertainers of the twentieth century, stepped onto the stage of the brand-new Brighton Centre. He had sold hundreds of millions of records, starred in over 70 films, and his relaxed crooning voice had defined an era - indeed Wikipedia calls him the world’s first multimedia star. The Brighton concert, just days before his sudden death in Spain, turned out to be his final public performance.

The Brighton Centre had opened - in prime position opposite the beach - only three weeks earlier. Designed by Russell Diplock & Associates, it rose in raw concrete and glass on the seafront, part of the city’s drive to secure conference trade and off-season visitors. From the start, though, it divided opinion. Admirers pointed to the steady flow of business it brought and the way it kept hotels and restaurants busy year-round, while detractors complained bitterly about its bulk, its brutalist lines and the loss of the older buildings cleared to make way for it. 

Despite the controversy, the Brighton Centre quickly established itself as one of the country’s premier venues - Crosby was only one of many famous names who performed there: Queen played in 1979, The Who thundered through the same year, and Bob Marley brought the Uprising Tour in 1980. The Jam chose it for their farewell concert in December 1982. And it has been as prominent in the political world as it has been among musical artistes: for decades, the venue has welcomed party political conferences transforming the city into a temporary seat of national debate.

Today, almost half a century on, the centre is hosting the FiLiA Women’s Rights Conference 2025. Some 2,400 delegates and more than 250 speakers are expected with the aim of discussing women’s rights, global feminism, violence against women, health, migration and related topics. Apparently some topics are controversial: outside, in the streets, there have been protests: a trans-led direct action group calling itself Bash Back claimed responsibility for smashing windows and spraying graffiti. It is accusing the conference of hosting ‘some of the most vicious transphobia in pop politics’. (See BBC News for more.)

Happy birthday Steve Ovett

Happy 70th birthday Steve Ovett. Born in Brighton on 9 October 1955, he was raised in Portslade and educated at Mile Oak School. He joined Brighton & Hove AC as a boy and trained regularly in Preston Park, but he switched to focus on athletics in his teens. By the age of 18 he was winning 800m medals at the  European level. Over the next decade he became one of the greatest names in athletics.

Ovett’s rivalry with Sebastian Coe defined British sport in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Coe was the meticulous planner, Ovett the instinctive competitor, but both set world records and pushed each other to the limits. Ovett won Olympic 800m gold in Moscow in 1980 and bronze in the 1500m, while Coe claimed the 1500m title. Between them they took the mile world record back and forth, Ovett’s best being 3:48.40 in Oslo in 1981. He also set records at 1500m and two miles, and won European and Commonwealth titles. His strong finish, upright style and ability to win from almost any position earned him a reputation as one of the sport’s most natural talents.

After retiring in 1991, Ovett moved abroad, living for long periods in Australia and Canada, but he continued to return to Brighton, where his reputation remained strong. He later worked in athletics commentary and coaching. In 2012 he was awarded the Freedom of the City of Brighton & Hove, a civic honour that underlined the pride his home city still takes in his achievements.

Brighton’s tribute came first with a bronze statue by Peter Webster unveiled in Preston Park on 31 May 1987. However in September 2007 the work was stolen, cut from its plinth at the ankle; police later recovered a leg and some fragments, but most was lost, leaving only the foot. That foot remains mounted in Preston Park as a curiosity for visitors. Webster produced a replacement statue, unveiled on 24 July 2012 on Madeira Drive near the Palace Pier, where it still stands today - see ArtUK and the BBC. Ovett himself attended the events around the unveiling, which also marked his Freedom of the City. The seafront figure has since become a landmark for runners and visitors alike.

Implicitly precarious

Graham Swift’s Here We Are - published in the UK five years ago today - is steeped in Brighton, with Brighton’s Palace Pier both setting and symbol in the summer of 1959, the heyday of seaside variety entertainment. Swift evokes the scene with precision: the stage ‘on a flimsy structure built over swirling water’, the pier boards beneath performers’ feet, the tang of salt air drifting into the theatre, and the nightly dispersal of audiences back onto the beach and prom. For him, the seaside is an ‘implicitly precarious’ place. 

The story circles around three performers: Jack Robinson, a gifted compère; Ronnie Deane, who takes the stage name ‘The Great Pablo’; and his assistant Evie White. The pier theatre is their world, a place of illusions, transformations, and betrayals, all played out above the restless sea. Ronnie, once a wartime evacuee lodged with a Brighton family, has made his identity anew as a magician. Evie, by day a shop worker in town, by night slips into sequins and vanishes nightly into Pablo’s illusions. Jack holds it all together with wit and warmth. But as the season that summer reaches its climax, Ronnie vanishes not just from the stage but from their lives. Swift then shifts the perspective to decades later, when Evie looks back on the Brighton summer that shaped everything. The pier, the gaudy lights, the endless stretch of pebbles, become bound up with memory, loss and the final trick that could never be undone.

Brighton is not only a backdrop here but a character in itself. Its beach is a place of impermanence, its pier a fragile platform where each night’s show disappears as soon as it is conjured. The book’s themes of illusion, disappearance and reinvention mirror the seaside town’s own rhythms, with its tides of visitors, its lights that glitter and fade, and its stages that once seemed to promise the world.

Swift, born in London in 1949, has always been a novelist of memory and what might be thought of as the ungraspable past. He read English at Cambridge and came to prominence with Waterland in 1983, a novel that blended history and personal inheritance, later adapted into film. His Last Orders won the Booker Prize in 1996, and across a dozen novels he has returned again and again to the mysteries of time, identity and loss.

Here is Swift in The Guardian writing about his book in 2021: ‘It seems I’m attracted to the seaside. It features in several of my books. A large part of my latest novel, Here We Are, is set not just in Brighton, but in a theatre on Brighton Pier. But then we are all, surely, drawn to the seaside. It’s a deeply compelling - and paradoxical - place. We go there for enjoyment, yet at the same time it is an elemental zone where land and water meet and thus, with or without the presence of cliffs, it is implicitly precarious. Nothing could more embody this than the seaside pier – a flimsy-looking structure dedicated to fun and frivolity, deliberately constructed over the crashing waves.

Interestingly, the book’s cover - taken from a famous American natural history book, The Birds of America by John James Audubon - was given a bespoke billboard installation by the Buildhollywood agency. It features hundreds of individual feathers hand applied and said to create ‘a bold, textured display to match the dramatics of the novel’.

The merriest place to love

 

Which is the merriest place to love,
Whether it be for a day or year,
Where we can slip, like a cast-off glove,
The care that hovers our world above?
 Come, and be taught upon Brighton Pier!

This is the opening verse in Clement Scott’s poem Brighton Pier which, in fact, is about the Chain Pier. Born on this day in 1841 he was one of the best-known theatre critics and journalists of late-Victorian London. For two decades he wrote reviews for the Daily Telegraph, and his notices could make or break a play. He also wrote travel sketches, popular verses, and several sentimental lyrics that caught the public mood in the age of seaside holidays and parlour song. His reputation in his own time was mixed: admired for his fluent style and influence, but criticised for the sometimes moralising tone of his criticism.

Scott married Isabel Busson du Maurier, the sister of George du Maurier, and the couple had four children. She died in 1890, and he remarried Constance Margaret Brandon, an English journalist and actress, in San Francisco. After an ill-considered 1898 interview in Great Thoughts, Scott was forced to retire as a theatre critic and he moved to Biarritz where he wrote The Drama of Yesterday and Today. He then worked for a couple of years at the end of the century for the New York Herald, later returning to London. In 1900, he founded The Free Lance, a journal for writers who worked by the job, which he edited. He died in 1904, and is barely remembered today, but see Wikipedia for more biographical information.

The poem Brighton Pier was among his lighter works. It was first published in Lays of a Londoner (Davide Bogue, 1882) and is freely available to read online at Internet Archive (a ‘lay’ being a short narrative or lyric poem). Like much of Scott’s verse it was designed to be read aloud or set to music, sitting close to the tradition of the popular ballad. Today it survives less as a work of high poetry than as a cultural document: a window into how Brighton was imagined in the late nineteenth century, when its pier, promenade, and beach had become central to England’s holiday culture. (Painting of the pier is by John Fraser and used courtesy of Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove. The portrait is sourced from Wikipedia)

Here is Clement Scott’s full poem.

Brighton Pier

Which is the merriest place to love,
Whether it be for a day or year,
Where we can slip, like a cast-off glove,
The care that hovers our world above?
 Come, and be taught upon Brighton Pier!

Wandering waves on the shingle dash;
 The sky’s too blue for a thoughtless tear;
Danger is nothing but pessimist trash,
And the morning’s made for a healthy splash:
 Come for a header from Brighton Pier!

Filled with life, see the children race -
 Motherly hearts they quake with fear -
Meeting the breezes face to face!
Whether we’re steady, or ‘go the pace,’
 Let us be young upon Brighton Pier!

Here she comes with her love-lit eyes,
 Hearts will throb when a darling’s near;
Would it be well to avoid her - wise?
Every fool in the wide world tries,
 But love must win upon Brighton Pier!

Lazily lost in a dream we sit -
 Maidens’ eyes are a waveless mere -
There’s many a vow when seagulls flit,
And many a sigh when lamps are lit,
 And many a kiss, upon Brighton Pier.

Dear old friends of the days long fled,
 Why did you vanish and leave me here?
Girls are marrying, boys are wed,
Youth is living, but I seem dead,
 Kicking my heels upon Brighton Pier!

Brighton’s RNLI stars on TV

The volunteer crew of the Brighton branch of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) have just taken centre stage in the latest instalment of the BBC’s Saving Lives at Sea, broadcast on BBC Two and iPlayer last week. The episode highlighted the work of lifeboat stations around the country and included dramatic footage of Brighton’s inshore lifeboat launching into challenging seas.

In the sequence filmed off the Sussex coast, the Brighton team were tasked with going to the aid of a sailing yacht that had run into difficulties. Viewers saw the orange Atlantic 85 lifeboat pounding through heavy swell as the crew closed in on the vessel, securing a line to steady it and bringing its skipper safely back towards shore.

Ahead of transmission, Brighton Lifeboat Station posted on social media (inc. Facebook) urging supporters not to miss the broadcast, with a photograph of four of its crew standing beneath the Palace Pier. The post underlined the pride local volunteers felt in being featured: ‘Tonight’s the night! Don’t miss our crew on Saving Lives at Sea, 8pm, BBC Two.’

The series, now in its tenth year, is produced in partnership with the RNLI to showcase the lifesaving efforts of lifeboat stations across the UK and Ireland. For the Brighton team, the primetime exposure was a chance to demonstrate not just the risks they face but also the importance of community support in keeping the station operational.

Saving Lives at Sea, Series 10, Episode 9

Leave No Trace

On Brighton Beach, just east of the Palace Pier, a bright collage of a seagull stands watch above the pebbles. Its blue feathers are layered over a city street map, and alongside it the words shout: Leave No Trace. The paste-up is by The Postman, a Brighton-based street art collective whose work has become part of the city’s visual fabric.

The Postman began appearing on Brighton’s walls around 2018, pasting up portraits of pop icons and local heroes in a vivid, pop-art style. Their pieces are instantly recognisable for their saturated colours, collage textures and playful humour. Over time they have moved from backstreet paste-ups to high-profile murals and commissions, but they continue to paste work directly into the public realm, where anyone might stumble across it on a morning walk.

The seagull piece feels especially at home by the beach. For Brighton, the gull is both nuisance and mascot, scavenger and sentinel. Its presence here, paired with the slogan, links directly to the council’s long-running campaigns to reduce litter left on the stones after busy weekends. Leave No Trace is an outdoor ethic borrowed from hikers and campers, urging visitors to take their rubbish with them and protect the natural setting. Seen from the shingle, it works as both a warning and a piece of local character.

Street art along the seafront is often fleeting - battered by wind, rain, and human hands. But for as long as it lasts, The Postman’s gull hammers home a simple seaside truth: the beach belongs to everyone, and what we leave behind becomes part of it.

Brighton beach tragedy

 Published this day, 29 September, in 1908 in the Mid-Sussex Times:

‘The Brighton Borough Coroner held an inquest on Saturday on the body of Charles Robert Wearne, aged 18, who was found shot on the beach on Friday night. According to the evidence given by Mr. Hammond Wearne, of Fourth Avenue, Hove, and Mr. Cecil Henry Croft, tutor, of Maude House, Tonbridge, the deceased lad was the son of Mr. Harry Wearne, a paper manufacturer, of Alsace, and received a liberal allowance. 

After three years’ tuition under Mr. Croft, young Wearne was sent to a German University to complete his education. In August last he came to England for brief stay with Mr. Croft. At the termination of this short stay at Tonbridge he went to London, where he was met by his father, who was making arrangements for him to start business in the establishment of a London agent. On Monday, however, the father received a letter from his son saying he had left London for ever, and threatening to blow out his brains if he were followed. 

It was supposed he sent his boxes to West Worthing and inquiries were at once instituted, but without avail. Information obtained revealed that he came to Brighton, putting up at an hotel in the Queen’s Road. He seemed to be perfectly happy, and on Thursday purchased a bicycle. It was known he had £20 in his pocket when he left London. When the body was removed to the mortuary the following letter was found in the clothing:

“Whoever finds this would be doing a great favour to me, and I know he will be repaid some day, if it be not before he gets to heaven. I have committed suicide because I could not live, although it was terribly hard to leave my parents and friends I loved so deeply. If they knew the truth, I know they would almost die, so I beg you to have it put in the papers that I died accidentally. 

I am residing at Queen’s Road, where I have all my belongings, including a beautiful new bicycle. I want all my belongings sent to H. F. Wearne, Manor House, Tonbridge, Kent. There is £1 in the left drawer of the wardrobe or chest of drawers, which will pay for the luggage to be sent. If you desire money or anything, I beg you, in my name, to go to E. S. Theobald, Esq., 22 Oxford Street, Newman Street, London, who is my father’s agent, and you will get all you want, I guarantee. . . . For reimbursement of all money apply to E. S. Theobald, Esq. Yours truly (signed) O. Wearne.” 

The Coroner questioned Mr. Hammond Wearne and Mr. Croft as to whether they could offer any reason for the suicide, but both said they were quite unable to account for it. Certainly he was not in want of money, and they knew of no romantic attachment. The father was said to be on his way to America. The jury returned a verdict of suicide, adding that there was no evidence to show the state of the deceased lad’s mind.’

We gave it away to the crabs

Piers are stepping-stones
out of this world, a line of poetry
flung out to sea on a whim,
a dazzle of sea lights
glimpsed between floorboards.

This is the opening stanza to Hugo Williams’s poem i.m. The West Pier (1866-2003), first published in the London Review of Books four years ago today. It’s an affectionate portrait of the old pier but far from sentimental, capturing instead the tension between seaside gaiety and slow decay, and placing the ruined structure firmly in the realm of memory and mortality.

Williams, born in Windsor in 1942, is the son of actor Hugh Williams and model-actress Margaret Vyner. Educated at Lockers Park and then Eton, he began publishing poems while still at school and went on to build a career marked by wit, intimacy and a finely-tuned autobiographical eye. His first collection, Symptoms of Loss, appeared in 1965, and over the decades he became recognised as one of Britain’s most distinctive voices, blending humour, candour and a conversational ease with themes of family, memory, illness and love affairs. His marriage to Hermine Demoriane has provided a recurring source of inspiration, as have the lives and deaths of his siblings, and his later years brought powerful reflections on dialysis and transplant surgery.

Williams’s books include Love-Life, which won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, Billy’s Rain, which took the T. S. Eliot Prize, and Collected Poems, which secured him the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. Although most of his life has been rooted in London, he has long contributed travel writing, journalism and poetry that reach into England’s coastal imagination. His work often circles themes of seaside towns, childhood holidays and the shifting moods of shorelines, placing him within a tradition of poets for whom Brighton and other resorts serve as shorthand for both freedom and transience.

Williams’s poem i.m. The West Pier (1866-2003) was first published in the London Review of Books (Vol. 43, No. 18, dated 23 September 2021), and can be freely read on the LRB website. It later appeared in book/pamphlet form in The West Pier, published by New Walk Editions in 2022.

The poem is considered an elegy to the Brighton beach ruins of the West Pier. Written in his typically spare and understated style, Williams evokes the pier as a decaying skeleton of its former grandeur, a structure whose collapse into the sea mirrors the erosion of memory and time. The poem treats the West Pier as both a civic monument and a personal touchstone, registering its slow disintegration not with nostalgia but with a wry acceptance of impermanence. In Williams’s hands, the pier becomes an image of loss that is as much about the inevitability of decline in human life as it is about the destruction of a beloved seaside structure. See also: the Sphinx Review; The London Magazine; and my own reflections on the ruins (written before I knew of Williams’s poem) - see In a silvery sea of time.

The portrait of Williams is a screenshot taken from a video of him talking to camera last year, when the T. S. Eliot Prize team invited him into a film studio to reflect on having won the T. S. Eliot Prize five years earlier.

i.m. The West Pier (1866-2003) by Hugo Williams

Piers are stepping-stones

out of this world, a line of poetry

flung out to sea on a whim,

a dazzle of sea lights

glimpsed between floorboards.

For 50p you can study eternity

through a telescope

and never have to go there,

only promenade to nowhere and back

in an atmosphere of ice cream

We used to take the speedboat ride

between the two piers,

pulling the canvas up to our chins

when the spray flew in our faces.

Now we stand and stare

at the remains of our innocence,

twisted girders piled up

in a heap of dead holidays,

while Brighton limps out to sea

on its one good leg.

*

There it is over there,

a little rusty island moored off-shore,

the empty cage of its dome

lying lower in the water

every time I come down.

Where are the luminous dolphins

on the merry-go-round?

Buffalo Bill’s Wild West?

We could have saved the old pier,

but we gave it away to the crabs

and put up a giant pogo-stick

on the seafront,

a middle finger to its memory.

Now only seagulls cry

in what’s left of the concert hall,

only storms shift the scenery.

It sinks below the horizon,

a black and tangled sunset

surrounded by bubbles.

Madame Esmeralda, gypsy fortune-teller,

presses her lips to the glass

of her waterlogged cubicle

and gurgles her apologies

for getting it all so wrong.

Sussex Diving Club

September is when Sussex Diving Club begins its autumn training cycle - a handy peg to look back at nearly half a century of local scuba. The club was founded in 1979 as BSAC Branch 1016 and today counts roughly fifty active members who split their year between winter socials and planning, spring pool work, and summer evenings or weekends on the wrecks and reefs off Brighton. The rhythm hasn’t changed much since the early years: trainees start in autumn and aim to be ocean-ready by early summer, while the old hands mentor, skipper, and keep the calendar moving.

Brighton Beach is not just a backdrop. Shore dives happen right off the Palace Pier in 5-9 metres with crabs, blennies and shoaling bass weaving through the pier’s tangle; on the right tides it’s an easy there-and-back swim from the shingle. Offshore, the club’s own site list shows ‘Palace Pier Reef’ ridges a short run from Brighton, plus a spread of novice-to-technical wrecks.

Among them is the Miown, a French steam trawler lost in 1914. Its cargo of cement bags set hard on the seabed, and today those solidified stacks resemble reef blocks, colonised by conger and lobster. Closer to Brighton lies the Inverclyde, a merchantman sunk by German aircraft in 1942. Sitting in thirty metres, its boilers, hull plates and steering gear are still visible, a reminder of wartime losses within sight of the Palace Pier. See also the Brighton-based Channel Diving website.

In 1979, the club formalised under BSAC and began running member-led trips off the Sussex coast. Through the 1980s and 1990s the local repertoire settled into a Brighton-Shoreham-Newhaven triangle, mixing evening reef dips with weekend wreck runs. By the 2000s the pattern of an annual UK club holiday and occasional expeditions further afield was established, while training broadened to include boat handling, oxygen administration and marine-conservation add-ons. In the 2010s, social media made the undersea Sussex more visible, but the core remained stubbornly clubby: volunteer-run dives, autumn intakes, and a summer diary pinned to tides and visibility. There are plenty of photos and videos on the club's Facebook page.

Skyline’s Brighton bike event

A crisp Sunday morning yesterday saw over four thousand or so cyclists gather at Clapham Common to start the Skyline London‑to‑Brighton Cycle Ride. Riders set off in staggered waves, carrying energy and strong fundraising ambitions. The 55‑mile route wound through leafy Surrey lanes, passing Banstead and Haywards Heath before climbing the mile‑long Ditchling Beacon atop the South Downs. Cresting the Beacon rewarded participants with sweeping views and a fast descent to Madeira Drive on Brighton’s seafront, where cheering crowds and medals awaited.

Skyline’s event has run for about fifteen years, operating under the Skyline Events banner, a charity-focused organiser that partners with many different causes. Riders pay a registration fee (currently £55) and commit to a minimum fundraising target (usually £150) for their charity of choice. The route, now well-established, typically moves from city streets to quieter country lanes, up and over the South Downs, and on to the finish in Brighton. Logistics include comprehensive sign‑posting, resident notifications along managed sections, mechanical support, and first aid. While the ride has grown in size and visibility, it remains smaller and more inclusive than the long-running BHF equivalent.

For context, the British Heart Foundation (BHF) London‑to‑Brighton Bike Ride, founded in 1976, attracts up to 14,000 participants and raises over £1 million each year. The BHF ride is a Father’s Day institution, with closed roads and major media coverage. (See 14,000 cyclists on Madeira Drive.) Skyline’s event offers an alternative autumn date and a wider mix of charity partners - such as Great Ormond Street Hospital, Breakthrough T1D, and the MS Society - providing more opportunities for different participants and causes. While the BHF version is known for its scale and road closures, Skyline favours inclusivity and a diverse range of abilities, giving the event a friendlier, less daunting atmosphere.

According to Yahoo News, riders in yesterday’s ride came from all walks of life and raised funds for a wide range of charities. Jonathon Gilchrist, 32, from London, called the ride ‘tough but really fun’, saying Ditchling Beacon was the hardest part and that he was riding in support of Hackney Foodbank with colleagues. Mairi Beasley, 27, also from London and new to cycling, said it was ‘amazing’ and praised the ‘huge sense of community’; she was raising money for Mind UK. Four friends from Wokingham - Simon Fawkes, Steve Simmons, Ian Stewart and Brian Allan - completed the route without stopping at the Beacon and raised £2,500 for Yeldall Manor, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre.

Guest: Anzac’s Brighton Beach, Gallipoli

On the Gallipoli Peninsula in north-west Turkey, there is a beach whose name echoes far from home. Known to soldiers of the First World War as Brighton Beach, it lies on a long curve of sand between the headland of Gaba Tepe and the narrow inlet of Anzac Cove. The name was never official but it stuck, a reminder of how men carried fragments of familiar landscapes into the most alien of settings. More than a century later the shoreline is quiet, its role in the campaign less famous than other places nearby, but it remains part of the story of Gallipoli.

To get there, walk south from Shrapnel Valley Cemetery, rejoin the main beach road and follow it for approximately half a kilometre. Ahead stretches the promontory of Gaba Tepe, and to your right lies the shoreline the ANZAC troops called Brighton Beach - originally designated ‘Z Beach’. In The Story of Anzac, Charles Bean recorded that the 3rd Australian Infantry Brigade - the intended Covering Force - was to land here on 25 April 1915 and advance inland to strategic ridges. But as history shows, the actual landings occurred further to the north.

The terrain facing inland from Brighton Beach was noticeably flatter and less rugged than the dramatic cliffs around North Beach and ANZAC Cove. It’s widely accepted that had the troops landed here, casualties would have been higher: the Turkish guns at Gaba Tepe and artillery further back at a location later nicknamed the ‘Olive Grove’ posed a grave threat to any incoming forces.

In the days following the initial landings, Brighton Beach became something of a logistical backwater. Under heavy shelling and sniper fire, men occasionally risked the water there, drawn to its relative serenity as a swimming area. A stores depot emerged at the mouth of Shrapnel Gully, heaped with supplies and hidden behind stacks of crates, timber, barbed wire and engineering stores. The Indian Mule Cart Company also established base here, transporting supplies inland under hazardous conditions. In one extraordinary incident on 22 May 1915, a white flag appeared at Gaba Tepe opposite Brighton Beach - prompting soldiers to improvise a truce using a beach towel raised as a flag.

Today, Brighton Beach stands in peaceful contrast to its wartime past. The shoreline is open and inviting, framed by gentle slopes and the distant headland of Gaba Tepe. Visitors can walk the same coast road used by soldiers and pause where stores once piled high against the dunes. It is now one of the few officially sanctioned swimming spots on the peninsula, a place where locals and travellers cool off in summer. Families picnic on the sand, tour buses stop nearby, and signs mark the site’s historic associations. The water is clear, the beach is quiet, and apart from the occasional memorial plaque there is little to suggest the noise and danger that once dominated this tranquil corner of the Dardanelles.

The starlings have gone mad

Today marks the 16th anniversary of the publication of The Death of Bunny Munro - Nick Cave’s darkly comic novel partly set in Brighton. One particular passage focuses on the burning down of the West Pier.

Cave, an Australian singer, songwriter, novelist and screenwriter, has been closely associated with Brighton since the early 2000s. Having lived for years in Hove with his wife Susie Bick and their children, Cave was often seen around the city and became a familiar if sometimes reclusive presence. 

Brighton has figured in both his music and his fiction: he wrote and recorded albums here, and its seafront and piers became woven into The Death of Bunny Munro. His time in the city was also marked by personal tragedy, most notably the death of his son Arthur in 2015, after which Cave and his family later relocated to London and Los Angeles.

The Death of Bunny Munro, published on 8 September 2009, follows the disintegrating life of a Brighton-based door-to-door cosmetics salesman. Bunny, a compulsive womaniser and alcoholic, is left to care for his young son after his wife’s suicide. As he spirals into chaos, his grotesque behaviour and addictions clash with moments of tenderness toward his child. The novel mixes bleak comedy, surreal imagery and local detail, casting Brighton in a lurid and unsettling light. Here is one extract from the book.

Bunny . . . says, ‘Libby, baby, where do we live?’

‘Brighton.’

‘And where is Brighton?’ he says, running a finger along the row of miniature bottles of liquor arranged on the bedside table and choosing a Smirnoff.

‘Down south.’

‘Which is about as far away from “up north” as you can get without falling into the bloody sea. Now, sweetie, turn off the TV, take your Tegretol, take a sleeping tablet—shit, take two sleeping tablets—and I’ll be back tomorrow. Early.’

‘The pier is burning down,’ says Libby.

‘What?’

‘The West Pier, it’s burning down. I can smell the smoke from here.’

‘The West Pier?’

Bunny empties the tiny bottle of vodka down his throat, lights another cigarette, and rises from the bed. The room heaves as Bunny is hit by the realisation that he is very drunk. With arms held out to the side and on tiptoe, Bunny moonwalks across the room to the window. He lurches, stumbles and Tarzans the faded chintz curtains until he finds his balance and steadies himself. He draws them open extravagantly and vulcanised daylight and the screaming of birds deranges the room. Bunny’s pupils contract painfully as he grimaces through the window, into the light. He sees a dark cloud of starlings, twittering madly over the flaming, smoking hulk of the West Pier that stands, helpless, in the sea across from the hotel. He wonders why he hadn’t seen this before and then wonders how long he has been in this room, then remembers his wife and hears her say, ‘Bunny, are you there?’

‘Yeah,’ says Bunny, transfixed by the sight of the burning pier and the thousand screaming birds.

‘The starlings have gone mad. It’s such a horrible thing. Their little babies burning in their nests. I can’t bear it, Bun,’ says Libby, the high violin rising.

The photograph of the West Pier above is credited to Terry Applin and can be found at The Argus.