LITERARY LIFE

MUST-READS Our choice of the best new books Photo: Kris Pawlowski Kris Photo: BRIGHTON FROM OLD PHOTOGRAPHS by Christopher Horlock (Amberley Publishing, £12.99) If one picture is worth a thousand words, this little book must equal many, many thousands, most John Vernon Lord conjuring up an almost impossible nostalgia for what has been lost. Brighton before World War I was a town with MY LIFE IN BOOKS beautiful old Regency houses, spectacular hotels and JOHN VERNON LORD elegant Victorian terraces, alongside trams, trains and theatres. Thriving industries included ironworks and John Vernon Lord, who is based in engine sheds, breweries and bakeries, supported by Ditchling, is probably best known farming, fishing and foreign tourists. for his children’s book The Giant Retired schoolteacher Christopher Horlock, a Jam Sandwich, which he wrote and regular contributor to Sussex Life and already illustrated. Other illustrated texts responsible for eight books about Brighton, has include The Nonsense Verse of assembled this wonderful new collection of images, Edward Lear and Aesop’s Fables each with descriptive paragraphs packed with (both award-winning). He is also historical information. the author of two books about He dispels some old urban myths and produces drawing and illustration, and is a fascinating material. Who knew that the Wellesbourne former professor of illustration at river, once flowing near East Street, is now the University of Brighton. underground? Or that the Chapel Royal is converted from a ballroom? Progress has a price. The book I loved as a child Louise Dumas The annuals written and illustrated by Alfred Bestall between 1935 and 1965. The content and composition of the illustrations, the characterisation of Rupert and his chums, the atmosphere and variety of the settings are all a delight.

The book that inspired me as a teenager Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White. Marion Halcombe is a wonderful character and a sound example that looks aren’t everything. The narrative technique is fascinating. THE SHINING CORD OF SCREEN STORIES: LEWES GOES The book I’ve never finished SHEILA KAYE-SMITH TO THE PICTURES Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano. by Shaun Cooper by Ruth Thomson Despite it being thoroughly (Country Books, £12.50, available via (Lewes History Group, £8.99, available via recommended to me by a friend, I sussexbooks.co.uk) leweshistory.org.uk) just couldn’t get on with it. The countryside was a pivotal source of inspiration For a small town, Lewes has an impressive history when for the Sussex writer Sheila Kaye-Smith. Most of it comes to cinema-going. In the first half of the 20th The book that moved me most her 30-plus novels were set in Sussex, among the century it boasted three cinemas. The earliest, the Maeve Gilmore’s A World Away – a farms and villages in the . County Theatre – a converted printworks in Watergate memoir of her husband Mervyn As an imaginative child growing up at the dawn Lane – opened in 1920. Peake, who was a brilliant illustrator of the 20th century, she and her sister spent The two main cinemas were the Odeon in Cliffe and the author of the Gormenghast several summers at Platnix Farm in Westfield, near High Street and the less salubrious De Luxe on trilogy. Peake developed dementia St Leonards, a place which was hugely influential in School Hill. The latter, despite its rodent population, and died at 57. The last pages in the her writing – as we learn from Shaun Cooper’s was regarded with affection and showed more care home are almost unbearable to comprehensive biography which contains much innovative films. read: “I want the vision of you, as original research. These two contrasting venues form the chief focus you were,” she writes. “Are you you? The picture he paints is of a complex individual, of this informative, entertaining and evocatively Or have you gone?” She gives him whose real-life fears are reflected in much of illustrated book, in which residents past and present a pencil to draw with, but it falls Kaye-Smith’s fiction, notably The Children’s reminisce about the magic and camaraderie of the from his knee. At this point, I burst Summer which was set in Hastings. big screen. into sobs. Above all, her work – which also encompassed Lewes’s newest cinema – the three-screen, short stories, poetry and non-fiction – is seen to state-of-the-art Depot – opened in May last year, in The book I’m reading now encapsulate a deep love of rural life in Sussex. Pinwell Lane. Thomson sees it as a version of its Solar Bones by Mike McCormack – a Veronica Groocock predecessors, offering diverse films and providing a long stream-of-consciousness novel. new community resource, complete with a café/ It’s interesting, but I’m struggling to restaurant open to the public. grasp a solid theme or plot as it Veronica Groocock tends to wander.

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