‘We battled past the sodden deckchairs, fortune-tellers and doughnut stalls, my hair coarsening in the wind, and my hand, clutching the umbrella above Tom’s, going numb. Tom’s face and body seemed set in a determined grimace against the weather. “Let’s go back . . .” I began, but the wind must have stolen my voice, for Tom ploughed ahead and shouted, “Helter-skelter? House of Hades? Or ghost train?” ’ This is an extract from Bethan Roberts Brighton-set novel, My Policeman, published on this day in 2012. While themes of repression, betrayal, guilt, and enduring love are explored against a backdrop of post-war conformity, Brighton Beach provides both a place of apparent freedom and quiet entrapment.
Roberts was born in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, in 1973. She studied English Literature at university before returning to writing via a part‑time MA in Creative Writing at the University of Chichester, which she completed over three years while working in television in Brighton. In 2006, she won the Society of Authors’ Olive Cook short‑story prize, which helped launch her literary career.
Her debut novel, The Pools, was published in 2007, earning the Jerwood/Arvon Young Writers’ Award. The follow‑up, The Good Plain Cook (2008), was serialised on BBC Radio 4’s Book at Bedtime and selected as a Time Out Book of the Year. On 4 August 2012, My Policeman was published by Chatto & Windus. The novel is set in Brighton in the 1950s and explores a love triangle between a policeman, his wife, and his secret male lover. It was chosen as Brighton City Read 2012, became an Irish Times Book of the Year, and was turned into a film in 2022.
Mother Island appeared in 2014, winning Roberts a Jerwood Fiction Uncovered prize, and Graceland, a fictionalised account of Elvis Presley’s early life, was published in 2019. Roberts also writes short fiction and drama for BBC Radio 4; she has worked in television documentary production and has taught creative writing at the University of Chichester, Goldsmiths, University of London, and West Dean College. She is based in Brighton with her family. For more biographical information see The Royal Literary Fund or New Writing South.
My Policeman is a tragic love story set in 1950s Brighton, where social conventions and laws criminalise homosexuality. The novel centres on Tom Burgess, a young policeman who marries Marion, a schoolteacher, while secretly maintaining a romantic relationship with Patrick, a museum curator. The story unfolds through dual narratives - Marion’s confessional manuscript and Patrick’s diary - both written decades later, as the emotional consequences of the hidden triangle are laid bare.
Here’s one extract in which Marion, on her honeymoon, is choosing a fairground ride.
‘And so, a few minutes later, we were strolling arm in arm towards the noise and lights of the Palace Pier.
My bouclé jacket was a pretty flimsy affair, and I clung to Tom’s arm as we sheltered beneath one of the hotel’s umbrellas. I was glad there’d been only one available, so we had to share. We rushed across King’s Road, were splashed by a passing bus, and Tom paid for us to go through the turnstiles. The wind threatened to blow our umbrella into the sea, but Tom kept a firm grip, despite the waves foaming around the pier’s iron legs and throwing shingle up the beach. We battled past the sodden deckchairs, fortune-tellers and doughnut stalls, my hair coarsening in the wind, and my hand, clutching the umbrella above Tom’s, going numb. Tom’s face and body seemed set in a determined grimace against the weather.
“Let’s go back . . .” I began, but the wind must have stolen my voice, for Tom ploughed ahead and shouted, “Helter-skelter? House of Hades? Or ghost train?”
It was then I started to laugh. What else could I do, Patrick? Here was I, on my honeymoon, battered by a wet wind on the Palace Pier, when our warm hotel bedroom - bed still immaculately made - was only yards away, and my new husband was asking me to choose between fairground rides.
“I’m for the helter-skelter,” I said, and started running towards the blue and red striped turret. The slide - then called The Joy Glide - was such a familiar sight, and yet I’d never actually been down it. Suddenly it seemed like a good idea. My feet were soaked and freezing, and moving them at least warmed them a little. (Tom has never felt the cold, did you notice that? A little later in our marriage, I wondered if all that sea swimming had developed a protective layer of seal-like fat, just beneath the surface of his skin. And whether that explained his lack of response to my touch. My tough, beautiful sea creature.)
The girl in the booth – black pigtails and pale pink lipstick – took our money and handed us a couple of mats. “One at a time,” she ordered. “No sharing mats.” ’
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