Viva Brighton Issue #74 April 2019

VIVA
B R I G H T O N
#74. APR 2019
EDITORIAL
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Viva Magazines is based at:
Lewes House, 32 High St,
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any omissions, errors or alterations.
Have you noticed the humming paving slabs
of Spring Gardens? Or the strange drone that
emanates from the Clock Tower intersection?
Road sweeper and philosopher Joe Henderson has.
She takes a longer, closer look at the streets than
most of us and her observations are alive with vivid
detail. I’d like to see the city through her eyes.
And what, I wonder, did Edward Cresy find in the
backstreets when he was appointed by the General
Board of Health to visit Brighton in 1849, to
conduct an ‘inquiry into the sewerage, drainage,
and supply of water, and the sanitary condition
of the inhabitants’? If the slum clearances that
followed are any indication, it wasn’t good. (The
word ‘ooze’ featured in his report.)
I thought I knew our streets pretty well, but this
month I’ve got to know a whole lot more about
them and the people who work in them. Like the
specialist St John Ambulance Service, bringing
essential healthcare to people who are homeless,
and the StreetVets who look after their pets. We
examine street art of the local, international and
revolutionary varieties, talk to a stall holder at
Brighton’s oldest street market, and meet five
local window cleaners. Plus, we recall a time when
horses ruled the roads, elaborate on Mr Cresy’s
findings and pay tribute to the late Ken Fines; a
man who ensured the conservation of some of our
most iconic streetscapes.
Next month the city will be thronged with
festival-goers and the streets will be at their
busiest. We thought we’d take this moment to
enjoy them for ourselves. The more you look, the
more there is to see.

VIVA
B R I G H T O N
THE TEAM
.....................
EDITOR: Lizzie Lower lizzie@vivamagazines.com
SUB EDITOR: David Jarman
PRODUCTION EDITOR: Joe Fuller joe@vivamagazines.com
ART DIRECTOR: Katie Moorman katie@vivamagazines.com
PHOTOGRAPHER AT LARGE: Adam Bronkhorst mail@adambronkhorst.com
ADVERTISING: Hilary Maguire hilary@vivamagazines.com,
Sarah Jane Lewis sarah-jane@vivamagazines.com
ADMINISTRATION & ACCOUNTS: Kelly Mechen kelly@vivamagazines.com
DISTRIBUTION: David Pardue distribution@vivamagazines.com
CONTRIBUTORS: Alejandro Martinez, Alex Hood, Alex Leith, Alexandra Loske,
Amy Holtz, Ben Bailey, Cammie Toloui, Charlotte Gann, Chloë King,
Chris Riddell, David Jarman, JJ Waller, Jacqui Bealing, Jay Collins, Joda, Joe Decie,
John Helmer, John O’Donoghue, Kate Elms, Lizzie Enfield, Mark Greco,
Martin Skelton, Michael Blencowe and Nione Meakin.
PUBLISHER: Becky Ramsden becky@vivamagazines.com
Please recycle your Viva (or keep us forever).

HURSTPIERPOINT COLLEGE

CONTENTS
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Bits & bobs.
8-27. Artist and architect Alejandro
Martinez is on the cover; Ken Fines –
saviour of Brighton’s streets – is on the
buses, and Alexandra Loske recalls a
time when Church Street traffic was of
the equestrian variety. Elsewhere, Joe
Decie finds (limited) inspiration on the
run, JJ Waller captures the hard realities
of street life for some, and we meet the
St John Ambulance Homeless Service
who are bringing essential heathcare services
to the city. Plus, Alex Leith happily
loiters at the Black Lion; Viva pops up
in Eritrea and Berlin Zoo; we’ve got
city guides to give you the inside track;
books from Jeff Noon and Damian Barr,
and cuddle monster Boris needs a home.
68
31
My Brighton.
28-29. Philosopher and road sweeper
Joe Henderson on the thrum of Brighton’s
streets.
Photography.
31-37. The world-travelling exploits of
street art hunter Tim Jentsch.
Photo by Tim Jentsch. Art by Mantra
Columns.
39-43. John Helmer’s on a one-man
neighbourhood watch, Lizzie Enfield’s
got ideas for an alternative A to Z, and
Amy Holtz is navigationally challenged.
On this month.
45-59. Ben Bailey rounds up his pick of
the gigs and the best of Brighton’s first
podcast festival; tales of coming out and
Hers & His by Alej Ez
8

CONTENTS
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transition in Rotterdam, and the Pulitzer
Prize-winning play Glengarry Glen Ross
are both at the Theatre Royal, and how do
City Reads pick the book for Brighton’s
biggest bookclub? Plus, we get an
insight into the state of the world’s plants
at Wakehurst; actor Ian Ruskin brings
Thomas Paine to life, and autobiographical
activist Bryony Kimmings is coming
to ACCA.
Art & design.
60-73. David Jarman visits In Colour –
from Sickert to Riley at Charleston; we find
out what’s up with the Paris 68 Redux
posters that have been popping up around
the city (and much further afield); Chloë
King gets to grips with a giant map of
Brighton, and just some of what’s on, artwise,
this month.
The way we work.
75-79. Adam Bronkhorst photographs local
window cleaners and asks what catches
their eye while they’re cleaning windows?
Food.
81-85. Joe Fuller samples his new veggie
local at the Roundhill; we’ve got a recipe
for Gujarati street food from Manju’s, and
just a taster of this month’s food news.
75
Features.
86-95. We meet the StreetVets; find
out how Edward Cresy’s report led to
the city’s slum clearances, and visit Upper
Gardner Street Market. And what
if Volk’s Railway inventor Magnus Volk
had also created a time machine? Plus
professional story teller Jon Mason is
creating a Time Travel Treasure Hunt
for the Festival.
Wildlife.
97. Michael Blencowe gets the gossip
from the nest-hopping Dunnocks.
Inside left.
98. Washington Street, Hanover, 1920.

THIS MONTH’S COVER ARTIST
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It’s a bit of a shame to confine the work of
Alejandro Martinez (aka Alej Ez) to our A5
cover. His panoramic drawings which capture
local landscapes with the kind of confident,
sparing line you might expect of an architect,
often extend over several metres. One of his
most popular prints is of the view east from
Hove Lagoon on a very clear day. “When I
got back to the studio and zoomed into the
photographs, I could see so much detail. All
the way to Belle Tout Lighthouse [near Beachy
Head]. Would you believe that was possible?!”
He has worked at Archangels Architects in
Kemp Town for the past five years and credits
them with encouraging his art as well as his
architecture. He still produces many of his
preliminary drawings and feasibility studies by
hand. “The job of an architect is complex – you
must be a craftsman, a draftsman, understand
construction, legislation, detailing – so, to
feed my creative side, I began to take my art
more seriously.” He now works four days
a week at the practice and spends Fridays
and weekends at the long-running artists’
cooperative, Studio Greenhouse, where he’ll
work on, say, a study of the ruined remains of
the West Pier, a meticulous rendering of the
Royal Pavilion façade, or plot the elaborate
details of our Regency buildings. “I was born
in Granada, which is very exotic, so it’s lovely
to know that the arches of the bandstand on
Brighton seafront are based on the arches of
the Alhambra palace. It’s good to make links. It
makes me feel at home.”
The drawings are then scanned and layered
with sophisticated, saturated colour; the
resulting images presenting the city as the best
version of itself. “I edit the images with some
Photo by Lizzie Lower
Hove & Brighton Promenade
....8 ....

ALEJ EZ
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artistic license: I let my eye capture an essence
instead of every last detail. I move things
around until I find them more pleasing. There
are normally no people in them at all – maybe
that comes from my architectural training –
but it makes the scenes look like it’s five in the
morning and nobody is there. It’s very soothing.
It gives them a sense of peace and quiet.”
More recently, Alej has turned his attention
to the wider Sussex countryside. Inspired by
the likes of Eric Ravilious and Paul Nash, he
has been working on views of Firle, Cuckmere
Haven and Devils Dyke, his panoramic style
lending itself to the broad sweep of the
landscape.
This being our ‘streets’ issue, our cover features
some quintessentially Brighton buildings from
the Old Steine. They are taken from the much
larger ‘Hers and His’ print, which includes Mrs
Fitzherbert’s house as well as HRH’s Royal
Pavilion, and we highly recommend that you
seek it out in full scale. There is always a great
selection of Alej’s work at Leo Frames (70
North Road) where, quite often, one of his
panoramic prints will be in the window. All the
better to stand back and take in the view.
Lizzie Lower
Alejandro will be exhibiting at Art 83 in Kemp
Town and Number Ten in Palmeira Square in
May’s Artists Open Houses festival. alejez.com,
leoframes.com, aaarchitects.co.uk
Regency Brighton Pavilion Finial and Domes
....9 ....

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TRIPS AND BOBS
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SPREAD THE WORD
‘Eritrea is an impressive
country with the friendliest
of people,’ reports West Hill
resident Janet Davies who
recently took a holiday in the
East African country. ‘Whilst
we were eyeing up the camels
at the market in Keren, our
friend Robel took a moment to
get a glimpse of Brighton life.’
Meanwhile, in Berlin, our
regular contributor Alexandra
Loske has been dutifully
spreading the word back in
her home town. ‘I have been
distributing Vivas to friends
and family here in Berlin’ she
reports. ‘I asked daughter to
take this picture in front of the
famous giraffe and antelope
house in Berlin Zoo.’ Regular
readers will know about Alexandra’s
love of colour and her
fascination with the moon, but
she’s also got a bit of a thing
about giraffes, so we weren’t at
all surprised about her choice
of backdrop.
Keep taking us with you and
keep spreading the word. Send
your photos and a few words
about your trip to
hello@vivamagazines.com
ON THE BUSES #48: KEN FINES ROUTE 50
Brighton would look altogether different if it weren’t for Ken Fines. In the
1970s Ken pushed for the conservation of the traditional streets of Brighton
and rejected plans for demolition and car-based development throughout the
town. He was born in Hove in 1923, and, in 1974, became a Borough Planning
Officer, rising to the position of Director of Planning for the Borough
of Brighton. He had a vision for the town and opposed plans to build more
high-rise flats along the seafront, instead pushing for the creation of five
new conservation areas. Working with the residents and traders in the town
centre, Ken recognised that sufficient features remained of the Victorian
townscape to warrant conservation status for the area that he dubbed The North Laine, in recognition
of the old field system of Brighthelmstone. It was designated a Conservation Area in 1976.
Ken’s involvement with the community and push for public transport over the creation of a new
network of roads, which would have flattened much of the area, earned him his position in the public
eye as a local hero and a blue plaque (on the wall of Infinity Foods) in his memory.
Fines retired and lived out the rest of his life in Hove, opposing the demolition of architectural heritage
until his death in 2008 aged eighty-five. The next time you are admiring the Victorian terraces,
you know who to thank for preventing their destruction. Alex Hood
Illustration by Joda (@joda_art)
....11....

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JOE DECIE
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....13....

CURATOR’S CITY
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Stables in Church Street 1826, aquatint after A. C. Pugin.
ALL THE KING’S HORSES:
CHURCH STREET IN THE 19TH CENTURY
My office is in the Old Court House, a sturdy
Victorian building in Church Street, directly opposite
the Brighton Dome and Corn Exchange.
Church Street is one of the oldest streets in
Brighton, leading up from the north-east corner
of the Royal Pavilion Estate towards the parish
church of St Nicholas of Myra. Although it is not
a main thoroughfare through Brighton, it is a
street teeming with urban business. I work with
a constant soundtrack of singing, shouting, sirens
and seagulls and general traffic noise drifting up
to my desk. This is what I imagine the painter
John Constable meant when he complained, in
1824, that ‘the magnificence of the sea [at Brighton]
is drowned in the din and tumult of stage
coaches, gigs, flys, etc.’
In the last few months I have been preparing a
new exhibition which opens on the 2nd of April
at Brighton Museum. All the King’s Horses, as we
cheekily decided to call it, will tell the story of
George IV’s passion for horses, dating back to
the 1780s, when the royal stables were located to
the south of the Pavilion, to the creation of the
magnificent new Royal Stables and Riding House
(now The Dome and Corn Exchange), created
to designs by William Porden between 1803 and
1808. This is of course what I am looking at from
my window.
....14....

CURATOR’S CITY
...............................
Stables from Church Street in early 1800s, artist unknown
Stables from Church Street in early 1800s, by ????????????????????
The Church Street façade of the stables has
changed dramatically since first built but has
retained its oriental flair. Images of how it looked
in the early years of the 1800s are rare, but this
delightful small watercolour (above) gives us an
idea, and even shows that the finial of the dome
was originally gilt. A more familiar image after
Augustus Charles Pugin (left), published in 1826,
shows fashionable Brighton society promenading
in Church Street. In the 1820s the entire perimeter
of the Royal Pavilion Estate was protected by
the military, seen here on duty flanking the main
entrance to the stables. In 1832 King William
IV added stables for his wife Queen Adelaide to
the east, as well as the new North Gate, seen in
a delicate drawing by Edward Fox from 1838
(right), the year Victoria was crowned queen and
first visited Brighton. A stage coach pulled by
four horses can be seen coming down Church
Street at considerable speed.
The façade underwent its most dramatic change
after the Royal Pavilion Estate went into municipal
ownership in 1850. Between 1867 and 1873
the stables complex was converted into performance
spaces, galleries, a museum and a public
library. Further changes to the exterior and
interior were made in 1901/2, and again in 1934,
adding an Art Deco entrance to the west. There
is a restlessness to my end of Church Street, but
also a grandeur and confidence that I cherish.
I have an office with a view of one of the most
exciting 19th century buildings in the country.
Alexandra Loske, Art Historian and Curator
All the King’s Horses: The story of the Royal
Stables and Riding House opens on 2 April and
continues until 29 September 2019. Brighton
Museum. Free with admission.
Church Street in 1838, by Edward Fox
All images courtesy of Royal Pavilion & Brighton Museums.
....15....

may festival
23-25 MAY
Featuring the Goodwood Food Show

BITS AND PUBS
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PUB: BLACK LION
As ever, I spare a
thought for Dirick
Carver, as I walk into
the Black Lion, which
has good claim to be
Brighton’s oldest pub,
one mid-March Thursday
lunchtime.
It’s an AFD (alcohol-free
day) so I
order a Virgin Mary,
and the young barman
meticulously prepares
it in a shaker as if it
were a cocktail, while
I sit and wait. I take in
my surroundings in the
leisurely way you do when you’re on your
own, though I’ve been here many times
before. The long main room has a wooden
floor, chunky tables, and scruffy artwork on
the walls. There’s a big choice of cocktails
on offer. Indie-pop filters through the
loudspeakers: Fur, Vira Talin, Dreamgirl
(thanks Shazam). The specials board offers
venison and tarragon pie, and I wish I
hadn’t already eaten. It’s a ‘Laine’ pub, with
a hipster vibe at night, but its position in
the Lanes has always drawn in all sorts, and
today, I figure, it’s largely day-trippers.
When my drink comes, there’s a lump
of celery in it that’s possibly big enough
to constitute one of my five a day, and a
Humphrey straw. There’s an aftertaste
of horseradish. It might well be the best
Virgin Mary I’ve ever tasted, which, at £4,
I’m pleased to be able to report.
I’ve done some
research on the Lion.
The building was
one of the oldest in
Brighton, but was
knocked down and
rebuilt, in facsimile,
in 1974. The first
edition of Pevsner’s
Architectural Guide
rather snootily describes
its façade as a
‘deceptive vernacular
pastiche faced in
cobbles, and with a
slate-hung, tall gabled
centre’. I love it:
getting a seat out front on a warm evening
is one of the real pleasures of Brighton.
Pevsner’s doesn’t mention Carver, a Protestant
Dutch immigrant who took over a
brewery on this site in 1546, when Henry
VIII was on the throne. Unfortunately
for him, Henry’s eldest daughter ‘Bloody’
Mary took over in 1553: two years later
Carver, a vehement transubstantiation denier,
was burnt at the stake in Lewes, stood
in a beer barrel.
I move to a table in the garden, overlooked
by portraits of Cuban revolutionaries, and
mull over blurred memories of the many
nights I’ve spent here over many decades.
And I raise my near-empty glass to Mr
Carver, suddenly realising that on another
day, I might – with inadvertent disrespect
– have ordered my souped-up tomato juice
with vodka in it. Alex Leith
....17....

'Fantastic place, full of beautiful magazines. I just love this shop.’
the world of great indie mags is here in Brighton.
22 Trafalgar Street
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magazinebrighton

JJ WALLER
...............................
“My Brighton photography centres around the documentation of the city
as I see it now.” Says JJ Waller. “Rough sleeping is a huge issue today but
hopefully, in the not too distant future, this picture and others I have made on
the same theme will allude to a human problem long passed.”
....19....

2019
One of the country’s finest Elizabethan Houses and award-winning gardens.
Set within an ancient deer park below the South Downs.
Photograph: Trevor Sims
Open 21 April - 13 October 2019
www.parhaminsussex.co.uk

BITS AND BOBS
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CHARITY BOX #36:
ST JOHN AMBULANCE HOMELESS SERVICE
Sharon Agnew, who runs the
Brighton and Hove St John
Ambulance Homeless Service,
explains why there’s more to
the first aid charity than many
people realise…
What is the St John Ambulance
Homeless Service?
Essentially, we provide mobile
first aid and health care to
people who are homeless in
Brighton and Hove. We have
two kitted-out former ambulances – and a
new, purpose-built unit on its way – where the
homeless community can access our services
every week. You can find us down at the Peace
Statue in Hove every Monday and Thursday,
when we also run an additional clinic at the First
Base Day Centre in Hove. We offer a range
of services including podiatry, dental care, GP
referrals, advocacy and dietary advice. But often
the people we see just want to have a chat over
a cup of tea.
Who operates the clinics? A volunteer nurse
leads the clinics and manages a team of around
four or five support volunteers. A lot of our
volunteers are retired people who have worked
in the medical profession and some do it in
addition to their current jobs. But anyone can
train to be a support volunteer for us as long
as they are willing to go through a DBS check.
They receive training in skills such as first aid,
homelessness awareness, communication skills
and safeguarding, then they usually do some
shadowing with more experienced team members
and then they start. Volunteering for us can
be a great outlet for people who
have some time to spare and are
looking to give something back.
How long has the service
been going? We’ve been operating
for 20 years now. We were
St John’s first homeless service.
The Hastings branch launched
15 years ago. But we are the
only two homeless services run
by St John’s nationally and even
20 years on, many people aren’t
aware of us. They think of St John’s as a first
aid charity but they don’t realise we run units
especially for the homeless community. That
can make it harder to raise funds. Because St
John’s is a big charity, people often assume we
have enough money coming in but the homeless
service is a separate strand and we’re very much
in need of donations to keep running.
What’s coming up next for you? We’re very
excited to get our new, purpose-built unit on the
road in a couple of months’ time. At the moment,
we have been working out of two converted
ambulances, which work well but aren’t ideal.
It’s thanks to a recent fundraising campaign that
we’ve been able to commission a purpose-built
unit that is being made to our exact specifications.
It’s due to be with us at the beginning of
May and we’re hoping to do some road show
events to show it off because we want people to
see what their donations have bought. It’s going
to be great having a third vehicle to work from
and it will mean we can help even more people
in Brighton and Hove. Nione Meakin
sja.org.uk
....21....

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BITS AND BOOKS
...............................
CATS SEEKING LAPS #11
BOOK REVIEW:
SLOWMOTION GHOSTS
Chunky Cuddle Monster Wants to Love You
Name: Boris (no relation to THAT Boris)
Age: 6
Occupation: Lap warmer
Me: I’m an enthusiastic cuddler with advanced
kneading skills and an abundance of empathy,
ready to soothe you with my strong purr and
loving head butts. You will enjoy squishing my
impressively large, soft belly and no doubt you
will cherish the surprise of my cold wet nose
pressed against your cheek as you sleep in the
night.
Seeking: Calm, catnip-friendly household with
space to roam and multiple humans to sit on.
Must be generous with affection and offer the
occasional lick of a buttery knife.
Interests: Dachshunds, gardening, shoulder-rides,
anything salmon-flavoured, anything
mouse-shaped (especially if it’s stuffed with cat
drugs), singing in the wee small hours.
Dislikes: Recurring bouts of cystitis, being
called too kneady, the drive to the vet, the other
Boris.
Words and picture by Cammie Toloui
cammietoloui.com / Insta: @cammie669
Find Boris and his friends at Raystede Centre for
Animal Welfare. raystede.org
Paracosm. The word means
an imaginary world, the kind
beloved of children working
alone or in cahoots with
siblings and/or friends. You
know the place – Middle
Earth, Narnia, the Brontes’
Gondal. The concept plays
a crucial role in Jeff Noon’s
new novel, his first straight policier. But of course
nothing in Noon’s work is straight and Slow Motion
Ghosts is crime fiction with some Alice in Wonderland
weirdness thrown in.
DI Hobbes is ostracised by colleagues after his
cop mate hangs himself following the Brixton riot
in 1981. Posted to Richmond, he investigates the
murder of Brendan Clarke, superfan of Lucas Bell,
glam rock god from the early 70s. Bell’s stage persona,
King Lost, complete with Aladdin Sane-type
mask, leads Hobbes down some mean streets to
Edenville, an invented village that is both shared
refuge for a bunch of outsider kids from Hastings,
and the source of King Lost.
It’s also where Hobbes finds his suspects. If detective
stories are all about uncovering what’s hidden
– awkward truths, motives, whodunnit – then
where better to locate them than in a paracosm?
This is where Noon both compels and enchants.
For Slow Motion Ghosts has the propulsive power
of a great detective novel, as well as the unique
imaginative quality that’s characterised Noon’s
work ever since his debut, Vurt, won the Arthur C.
Clarke Award in 1994. Will Slow Motion Ghosts win
an award? It would be a crime if it didn’t.
John O’Donoghue
Slow Motion Ghosts, Doubleday, £16.99 hb
....23....

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BITS AND BOOKS
...............................
BOOK REVIEW: YOU WILL BE SAFE HERE
BY DAMIAN BARR
Damian Barr is a busy man.
When he’s not writing columns
for The Sunday Times and
The Big Issue, he’s host at his
Literary Salon, at the Savoy
Hotel in London. With Martini
dry wit he’s talked books to
Armistead Maupin, Bret Easton
Ellis, JoJo Moyes, Patrick Gale
– the list grows longer and
more glamorous by the month.
Below all this swanning about,
though, is a very powerful
drive, stemming I think from
his upbringing in Motherwell.
He chronicled this tough background in Maggie
and Me, his memoir of growing up gay and
bookloving in the 1980s, and now comes his
first novel, You Will Be Safe Here.
On a sunny Spring afternoon I speak to him
down the phone from Viva HQ. I ask him why
he’s set the novel largely in Johannesburg. “I was
reading an article about the murder of a boy in
South Africa,” he tells me in his warm, Caledonian
tones. “He looked just like a boy that I’d gone
to school with. The story of what happened to
that boy is part of the inspiration for one of the
contemporary characters in the book.”
This led me to ask about the dual timelines in
the novel. After a short prologue, the book opens
with the diary of Sarah van der Watt, taken from
her farm by the British in 1901, and brought
with her six-year-old son to Bloemfontein
Concentration Camp. The diary is addressed to
Sarah’s husband, who is fighting against her captors.
“Time is the novelist’s tool,” he says, reflecting
on Britain’s relationship with
her former colony. “That history is
being repeated and also ignored is
a strange irony.” He warms to his
theme. “I found it most revealing
to go to the Anglo-Boer War
Museum in Bloemfontein, and to
meet the murdered boy’s mother.”
The depth and commitment of his
research – five years in total – is
evident throughout the novel,
whether in the details of Sarah’s
experiences as a prisoner, or in the
use of slang and Afrikaans that runs
like barbed wire through its pages.
The harshness of colonial history culminates
in an account of a second camp, where young,
awkward Willem is sent at the urging of his stepfather,
who wants Will’s awkwardness drilled out
of him. This awkwardness is the awkwardness
most teenagers go through, which Barr expertly
evokes, as well as creating female characters –
Willem’s mother and grandmother, a black judge
– who counterbalance Sarah’s Boer voice.
We get off the phone and I wonder where
Damian Barr will go next. For there is no doubt
that he has written a moving and brilliantly
written novel, shot through with poetic touches
and characters you won’t easily forget. I have a
feeling we’ll be seeing him on a fair few podiums
in 2019. You Will Be Safe Here is terrific.
John O’Donoghue
You Will Be Safe Here, Bloomsbury, £16.99.
Damian will be interviewed by Natalie Haynes
at 7pm, Thursday 4th, St. Michael & All Angels
Church, Victoria Road, £10. City Books/Eventbrite
....25....

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each owns a share in
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You can become a Lewes FC owner, too,
for as little as £30/year
www.lewesfc.com/owners
It takes less than 60 seconds to sign up.
Your help will make a difference. Join us.
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BITS AND BOGS
...............................
MAGAZINE OF THE MONTH: CITIX60
I’ve been coming to or living
in Brighton for almost all of
my life. I carry with me the
big memory of the sea and the
Downs but Brighton means
streets to me. It’s in the streets
that the abstract becomes real.
The streets are where you see
kindness and intolerance, variety
and sameness. The streets
are where the life is; the streets
are where towns and cities
come alive or, sometimes, die.
All of which is why, when we
thought of opening Magazine
Brighton, we thought first of Trafalgar Street. It
has always been our first port of call, our entry
to the North Laine and our first breath of the
Brighton we love. It’s also why we are so pleased
to be here. Our street is one of the truly independent
streets of Brighton. Without a chain
store in sight, the mix is just brilliant and the
people are the same.
Do you want an independent magazine, a choice
of great coffee shops, a radiator store, a specialist
hat shop, a craft beer outlet,
three or four great pubs,
Vietnamese, Lebanese, Japanese,
Korean or French food,
something vegan, the best Saturday
burger, your computer
repairing, to buy a rug, or the
best chillies and much more?
Just come to Trafalgar Street.
It’s all here, just seconds from
the station.
In honour of streets, this
month we are highlighting
a series of city guides called
CITIX60. Pocket-sized, we
like them because they contain 60 recommendations
from 60 local creatives who live on and
use the streets of their own town. Each guide
focuses on museums, architecture, outdoor
sculpture, food and drink, fashion, music,
leisure and more. Visit any one of their recommendations
and you’ll be enjoying street life
from the moment you arrive in town. It’s the
best place to be.
Martin Skelton, Magazine Brighton
TOILET GRAFFITO #51
As we go to press, we’ve no real idea if we’ll still be in
the EU or not by the time this issue hits the streets.
The Brexit negotiations continue to hold all the
promise of a blind alley, so our advice is to seek out this
cubicle, for here sat an eternal optimist. ‘Everything
works out in the end. If it hasn’t worked out, it isn’t
the end yet.’ Tell that to Theresa May and Jean Claude
Junker. But where is it?
Last month’s answer: Presuming Ed
....27....

INTERVIEW
..........................................
Photo by Adam Bronkhorst, adambronkhorst.com
....28....

INTERVIEW
..........................................
MYbrighton: Joe Henderson
Street Cleaner
Are you local? I consider myself local to Sussex
as I was born in Eastbourne but now live in
Seven Dials, just round the corner from where
my nan had a flat in the 80s. I’ve also lived in
Seaford and Oslo.
What do you do? My ID badge says I’m a
Street Cleaner but sometimes I use the older
term ‘Road Sweeper’. Basically, I keep the public
footpaths tidy and litter-free whilst making
friends with the local cats. The seasons dictate
my workload, whether it’s natural detritus from
the trees, animal waste, dust or bits of flotsam
that wash up from general human activity. I’ve
been studying philosophy at the Free University
Brighton (who are based at City Clean depot)
for the last few years so I spend these days
meditating on Phenomenology. It can be a
punishing job but there is a Zen-like quality to
repetitive actions like sweeping.
How does being a Road Sweeper affect how
you perceive Brighton? I notice little things
like the humming paving slabs outside the
electricity plant on Spring Gardens, seagulls
doing a rain-dance in the park (they sometimes
do yoga too) or the strange drone emanating
from the Clock Tower intersection. For a long
time I’ve had a curiosity about street furniture
– street lamps, abandoned phone boxes, esoteric
road signs and markings – the ‘equipment’ of
urban places. During major road works I’m
reminded of what’s underground, hidden, but
essential. The job I do is not for everyone, but
there is a sense of camaraderie, diligence and a
necessary love of the outdoors within the crew
that is priceless.
What do you like about Brighton? The sense
of anonymity can be refreshing. I like being a
little fish in a big pond. It’s still a small world,
and you can’t get completely lost (although
many do, there’s a lot of runaways in this town)
but it has a transient nature which is what makes
all the community projects and compassion in
the city so important and special. We are in a
UNESCO Biosphere region which recognises
the unique geography of marine, urban and
Downland. The texture of the climate and the
soundscape of seagulls is a constant reminder
of its coastal nature, which is comforting if you
have grown up near the sea and find yourself in a
new city like I did when I first moved here.
Whilst central Brighton can get hectic you can
always get on a bus and escape (the National
Trust have actually funded the number 77 bus
to Devils Dyke for this reason). There are also
parallels with San Francisco, even more so with
the tech work going on at Sussex Uni. In the
future Brighton may become ‘Little Silicon
Valley’, and where the Victorian pleasure town
clashes with AI and VR is anyone’s guess. I’m
keeping an open mind.
What don’t you like about Brighton? The
cost of living is astronomical. And ‘No pets
allowed’.
When did you last swim in the sea? A few
years ago in Seaford. It’s usually deserted on the
beach, even in summer. Last year I discovered
The Pells outdoor pool in Lewes. It’s the oldest
in the UK. Brighton buses are linked up to both
these towns.
Interview by Joe Fuller
....29....

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PHOTOGRAPHY
....................................
Tim Jentsch
Street art hunter
Brighton-based flight
attendant Tim Jentsch uses his
layover days to photograph
street art around the world.
With 10+ years of experience
in photographing street art,
Tim has built up an impressive
network of contacts, which
helps him find a startling
variety of works to share
with his 23k+ followers on
Instagram.
I document street art
because I think it’s a very
interesting art movement.
Nothing is permanent. Sometimes pieces don’t
last very long, so I catalogue everything in
various cities around the world. I’m involved
with isupportstreetart.com, a not-for profit
street art platform with 100k subscribers.
I’ve been using a drone to photograph my
finds for about a year. It’s absolutely amazing.
Sometimes walls are really high up, and if you
want the perfect picture you need to be in front
of that wall. If you take it from an angle, it’s not
going to reflect the full scale.
With its roots in graffiti, there are now a lot
of elements that we include under the term
street art. From quick throw-ups to stencils.
A throw-up is a T and a J, in bubble letters
for example. Stencils are best known through
Banksy. Huge abstract or photorealistic murals
are the tip of the iceberg. Paste-ups are very
popular too, which involve paper designs stuck
up to walls with wheat paste.
Street art is for everyone, rich or poor,
young or old. Whether you want to look at
it at night or in the day, it’s there for everyone
to enjoy. I love that the wall
or surface that a piece is on
becomes its unique canvas.
This adds character. It’s a oneoff
thing.
A lot of cities support the
street art scene and are now
putting mural trails or street
art maps together to encourage
urban exploring. Unfortunately,
Brighton is far behind
compared to other cities.
I feel that Brighton
hasn’t quite understood
the difference between
vandalism and street art yet. A guy who
tags listed buildings and people’s property is
a vandal, not a street artist. I don’t agree with
that. My vision is that, if the local council
supported this art form more, people would
need to up their game a little bit. It would be
great if we could have a street art festival in
Brighton. The city needs a few big walls. At the
same time we could have a few allocated areas
where everyone can get involved. Like Bristol’s
Upfest for example. They put up boards in pub
beer gardens and let everyone be part of it.
The city seems to focus on stopping
vandalism and taggers while neglecting
local talent. It’s important to recognise that a
massive mural by a top international artist is
something completely different from someone
writing ‘I Was Here’ on a wall. That’s neither
street art nor graffiti, it’s closer to people
smashing windows, than people making art.
As told to Joe Fuller
Instagram @timjentsch,
Facebook @TimJentschStreetart
....31....

PHOTOGRAPHY
....................................
Photos by Tim Jentsch. Brighton works by: Bordalo II (top), Minty (bottom) & Mr Cenz (right).
....32....

PHOTOGRAPHY
....................................
....33....

PHOTOGRAPHY
....................................
Photos by Tim Jentsch. Brighton works by clockwise from top left: Cosmo Sarson, Aroe, Trusty Scribe & Req. Mantra (right, Luxembourg).
....34....

PHOTOGRAPHY
....................................
....35....

BRIGHTON
PHOTOGRAPHY
It ain’t what you view,
it’s the way that you view it.
Unique photography of Brighton and the South Downs
brightonphotography.com | 52-53 Kings Road Arches | 01273 227 523
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01273 911151

PHOTOGRAPHY
....................................
Photos by Tim Jentsch. Artists clockwise from top left: JR (New York), Smugone (Antwerp), Lonac (West Palm Beach, Florida) & Tymon de Laat (Rotterdam).
....37....

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tranquil nature reserve and natural play spaces
Kew’s wild botanic garden in Sussex
For details and events visit kew.org/wakehurst

COLUMN
...........................................
John Helmer
Street
A flattened clod of earth punctured by the
imprint of studs from a child’s football boot. A
window cleaner going house to house collecting
fees. Two for-sale signs.
A robin. A cat snarling at a dog. A dog barking at
a fox. A fox in the night slinking up an alley then
turning to stare back at us, its eyes two shining
silver discs.
At 7:45 am, a builder parked with the engine
running, shouting into his mobile phone over
the sound of a car radio. Boys in blazers blocking
the morning pavement to pick up a friend –
while the friend’s mother watches nervously
from an upstairs window.
The columnist, running for the bus stop at the
end of the road.
Scaffolding on house-fronts to roof level. A skip.
A spattered cement mixer in the road and planks
placed over the steps up to a front door.
A silver-haired woman and her giggling
granddaughter taking a puppy for its first
walk. Charity bags full of clothes left out for
collection.
The tail end of a queue for hot cross buns from
the baker’s shop round the corner on Good
Friday morning.
Wheelie bins at mad angles, some on their backs,
after a storm. Rust-coloured slugs sprawled
across a garden path following rain. The sound
of scrapers on frosted car windscreens.
Six magpies in the street’s only tree. A tax rebate
on the doormat.
Dawn, fog, rain, sun, twilight, dusk, night.
A dog-walker watching his cockapoo distractedly
as it squats in front of the columnist’s house.
Later, the columnist walking out of his front
door, stepping in the dog poo and swearing.
A bike shed, blown over a wall by high winds,
blocking the path to a neighbour’s front door. A
further bike shed, home-built out of pallet wood.
Dogs barking at postmen.
A skateboarder misjudging the camber of the
road and falling off.
A suited man standing in the porch of his house
with mobile phone held high to hail his Uber.
Children in demonic costumes going from
house to house, begging for sweets.
A flute being practised.
Members of a book group arriving at the door,
clutching Prosecco.
Ocado vans ventilating on a Friday evening.
An English teacher in a kilt, playing bagpipes on
the steps of his house at New Year, while friends
and neighbours cavort in the road.
The erratic chime of glass bottles being
placed in a recycling bin by a hungover
householder as the recycling van
approaches remorselessly
from two doors down.
An unexpected
spring day in
winter; the
warmth
of dusty
sunlight
belied by an
underlying
air-chill.
A child crying
in the night.
An unnoticed
earthquake.
Illustration by Chris Riddell
....39....

COLUMN
.........................
Lizzie Enfield
Notes from North Village
Illustration by Joda (@joda_art)
There’s a new street at the end of our street.
They have a habit of appearing, almost as if
by magic, in places where previously there was
just a bit of space on the map.
Not long after moving into our current home,
a new street was created where previously
there had been garages and a large skulk of
foxes. (I had to look up the collective noun
for foxes and, given the amount of skulking
around they do here, found it particularly apt.)
I thought the street namers might have given
a nod to the foxes’ former home when they
came up with a name for the street. There
are plenty of precedents for this elsewhere:
Lamb’s Conduit Street in London, for
example, which is now all artisan dining and
select clothes shops, was once the way along
which sheep were driven through the city.
And in Norwich, where my daughter is now
at university, there is a Rampant Horse Street
where the mind begins to boggle imagining
what must have gone on there…
So I thought that the new street would be
named something like Fox Skulk Street or
Cunning Vixen Close but instead the namers
just added ‘Close’ to the name of the street it
turned off.
So far, so unimaginative. I was hoping for
better with the new new street, which has just
materialised beside the railway line.
Murderous Crow Street perhaps or, better
still, name it after a notable local resident,
like on the buses – one of my closest friends
was surprised and delighted to see her father
heading towards her along St. James Street
several months after his death. He’d been
immortalised on the front of the bus, which
gave her family much pleasure.
This particular part of town is full of writers
and, where Hove has a Poet’s Corner, here we
could start a Writers’ Enclave. Grant Street
perhaps after my illustrious neighbour Colin?
Or Chris Riddell Close? I wouldn’t presume
after an Enfield Street although there is
one in Birmingham and I do have a whole
London borough to my name.
So I was eagerly looking forward to the
naming of the new street and a little
disappointed that, again, it’s taken the name
of the neighbouring street and simply turned
itself into a mews.
A lost opportunity and also, it turns out, a
generator of lost people.
This new street is not on the map. Phones
and Satnavs are about as useful as the very
first Satnav I owned. It took so long to load
all the maps, back in the dark ages, that I
gave up after a while and, whenever we went
beyond the loaded map area, the Satnav would
behave as if we had entered a vortex and start
shouting at us to go back to the road.
I’ve a mind to position myself near the
entrance to the new street and shout
directions to some of the people spotted
staring at their phones and vainly trying to
find it.
....41....

BRYONY KIMMINGS
I’M A PHOENIX,
BITCH
“ Unmissable”
Lyn Gardner
3, 4 & 7 MAY 8PM
5 & 6 MAY 4PM
PREMIUM £18/£14
STANDARD £16/£12
01273 678 822
attenboroughcentre.com
University of Sussex, Gardner Centre Road, Brighton BN1 9RA
HHHHH The Guardian
HHHH The Stage
HHHH Time Out
HHHHH What’s On Stage
Gareth
Treason
Southgate
Productions
Ate My Credit Card
A new comedy by Paul Hodson (Brighton ’Til I Die & Fever Pitch) &
Mark Brailsford (The Treason Show & Southern Fail the Musical)
NOW IN IT’S RECORD BREAKING 19TH YEAR!
THE TREAS N SHOW
“Savagely funny - fantastically silly” The Guardian
The Latest
chortle.com
The Argus
Broadway Baby
Northern Echo
Fringe Guru
DIRECTED BY BRIGHTON FRINGE AWARD WINNER MARK BRAILSFORD
How love and football can ruin your life: a comedy
Thur 9th - Sat 11th May
7.30pm
Tickets £11.50 & £13.50
Box office www.brightonfringe.co.uk
or call 01273 917272
Thurs 23 - Fri 24 May @ 8.30
Sat 25 & Sun 26 May @ 9.30
Tickets £10 -£15
Meal deals & Cocktails!
Tickets www.treasonshow.co.uk
or via fringe box office 01273 917272

COLUMN
...........................
Amy Holtz
The truth is, I’m a Minnesotan
“You know where we can get a
taxi?”
It’s Saturday night and the outof-towners
are still relatively well
behaved. They’ll be disappointed
in a moment though, that they’ve
asked me.
“Yeaaaaahhhh,” I exhale and start
to open all the little drawers in
my mind where street names
go. As always happens, only bats
fly out. “Er, just go down there
a ways, past the buses, and it’ll be just there…”
I check my hands for the tell-tale L, “on your
right.”
It’s not a diagnosable problem, I’m sure, but it
probably shouldn’t take a person 14 years to
learn the street names in Brighton. I mean, I
know what the names of streets are, just not, you
know, where they are. This, and I’m not 100%
sure of the difference between Hangleton and
Hanover, except there are hills involved. And
one of them is actually called Muesli Mountain.
Either way, I find it hard to visit neighbourhoods
that exist at the top of an incline, with their
own microclimates. (Little known fact –
Woodingdean is actually Brigadoon.)
Last week, on the way to a work meeting on
Middle Street, I led everyone down the wrong
lane. I was feeling confident because there was
that church with all the art, and those shoe stores
and then that store that sells bins and toilet
brushes AND greeting cards and then that’s
where things got a little muddled.
“Um. Well. It should be here.” The trouble
was, I didn’t know which direction – now that it
clearly wasn’t here – Middle Street was in. “Let’s
go down this alley –” I said, confidently, “I’m
sure it’s just down this way.”
It only took an hour for
other people to exit the
Bungarooshed path, and then
we took our turn to tramp
through, westward. It spat
us out somewhere between
Kemp Town and Portslade,
which seemed promising.
We appeared to be at the
hellmouth of one of the less
picturesque bottom lanes (a
term not widely used, but accurate), where the
buildings all match; grimy doors and windows
sitting flush with their dull façades. Is this
actually a bottom lane? Or bottom laine? Or is
it actually spelled ‘lahaigne’? Does anyone know?
Then it started to rain. I hand-checked left... and
then right. A loud sigh (not uncommonly heard
when I’m in charge of geographical pursuits)
sounded behind me.
“It’s this way,” someone says, taking the lead and
my elbow and guiding me, not unlike their nan,
down the road.
The biggest issue, for me, is that nothing makes
sense here. Sure, there’s no poetry whatsoever in
our stateside street nomenclature, but at least – if
you can count – you can find 7th from 8th Street
(with the exception of 7½th Street, but we won’t
get into that).
But whoever cast ill-devised names willy-nilly
through old Brighton was quite the jokester, like
the one they called North Street, which changes
its mind just around the time it actually starts
going north and turns into something different.
But hey, why be ‘lane’ when you could be
‘lahaigne’? How charming to be both… despite
my perpetual bewilderment.
....43....

LEGENDS LIVE
Sun 7 Apr
UB40 FT ALI & ASTRO
Mon 8 Apr
THE ORIGINAL HARLEM
GLOBETROTTERS
Sun 5 May
MICHAEL BALL
Wed 8 May
box office 0844 847 1515 *
www.brightoncentre.co.uk
*calls cost 7p per minute plus your phone
company’s access charge
1.4 | The Greys Pub
Melting Vinyl & terrace cred present
Rose Cousins
9.4 | The Rose Hill
Alex Rex
12.4 | St George’s Church
So Recordings presents
Band of Skulls
27.4 | St George’s Church
The Unthanks:
Unaccompanied, As We Are
30.4 | Komedia
C Duncan
30.5 | Westgate Chapel, Lewes
Melting Vinyl & Lewes Psychedelic
Festival present
Death and
Vanilla
3.6 | The Old Market
Julia Holter
10.6 | The Prince Albert
Vanishing Twin
21.6 | St George’s Church
Joan as
Police Woman
JOANTHOLOGY TOUR
24.10 | The Hope & Ruin
Melting Vinyl and Love Thy
Neighbour present
Pom Poko
Tickets for shows are available from your local record shop,
seetickets.com or the venue where possible.
meltingvinyl.co.uk

MUSIC
..........................
Ben Bailey rounds up the local music scene
CURRLS
Tue 9th, Hope & Ruin, 7.30pm, £7/6
Brighton trio
Currls have only
released one song
so far, yet they’ve
spent the last year
playing ever-bigger
support slots and local festivals, including
Brighton Pride and The Great Escape. All this
based on the strength of last year’s single April Fool
(and yeah, it’s that good). Currls’ sound is a mix
of post punk and power pop – channelling The
Strokes, Gossip and Blondie – with strident vocals
that somehow signal both nonchalant cool and
pure exuberance. This gig, which also includes a
support set from Djuno, is the launch party for
Currls’ second single Let Down. With expectations
set so high, let’s hope the title is ironic.
WASHED OUT FESTIVAL
Fri 12th & Sat 13th, various venues, £22
Festival season
starts earlier every
year in Brighton as
new events arrive
and settle for an
unclaimed weekend
either side of the summer. The first Washed Out
took place a couple of years ago and has since
expanded across eight central Brighton venues.
The founder of the festival risked his student loan
on the original line-up; luckily it paid off. Though
the acts are from all over, the event is rooted in
the city’s DIY scene and covers every sub-genre
on the spectrum between indie and punk.
Brighton bands dominate the bill, such as Arxx,
Big Slammu, Beach Riot, Ditz, Egyptian Blue,
Squig and Gender Roles (pictured).
BAD POND FESTIVAL
Sat 20th & Sun 21st, Concorde 2, 2pm, £35/22
Jamie Lenman and
Three Trapped Tigers
headline this year’s Bad
Pond Festival, alongside
a strong line-up of over 20 bands. What began
as an all-dayer at the Green Door Store in 2015
has grown into a proper weekender down at the
Concorde. The music is leftfield and experimental,
with an emphasis on the rockier side of what
that might mean. There’s electro-punk from
CLT DRP, folky alt-rock from Wild Cat Strike,
classic instrumental prog courtesy of Poly-Math
and some upfront fuzz pop from rising grunge
rockers Beach Riot. Harder tastes are catered for
by Broker’s post-hardcore barrage and The Guts
(pictured) who describe themselves as a “mathcore
jump scare scream team”.
NAOMI BEDFORD &
PAUL SIMMONDS
Fri 26th, Unitarian Church, 7pm, £16
Naomi Bedford was singing
at a party in Brighton
when she was overheard
by the guys from Orbital
who ended up getting her
to do the vocals on their 2001 hit Funny Break.
These days she’s found playing Appalachian
ballads with her partner Paul Simmonds from
folk punk stalwarts The Men They Couldn’t
Hang. This gig is a benefit for the Peter Tatchell
Foundation, a human rights charity set up by the
LGBT campaigner (Tatchell himself is appearing
as a guest speaker). The event is billed as ‘A Night
of 21st Century Folk Music’ and also features
Robb Johnson, Bird in the Belly, Lisa Knapp and
Sarah Clarke Kent & Sue Tyhurst.
....45....

Hugh Bonneville
Liz White
SHADOWLANDS
By William Nicholson
Hugh Bonneville plays writer C.S. Lewis in this multi award-winning play
about his life-changing relationship with Joy Gresham, played by Liz White.
TICKETS FROM
£
10
26 April – 25 May
cft.org.uk
#Shadowlands

BOOKS
.............................
Let Me Be Like Water
The 2019 book for City Reads
What does it take for a novel
to win over the panel of City
Reads, arguably Brighton and
Hove’s biggest book club?
The answer is: quite a lot.
“It has to have really meaty
themes but it’s also got to be
easy to read,” explains City
Reads’ artistic director Sarah
Hutchings. “It doesn’t have to
be set in Brighton but, if it’s
a good read and it’s set here,
that would probably give it
the edge on another title. And
since it’s going to be read by
thousands of people, it’s got to
be a book that will get everyone talking.”
Fortunately, the panel were “pretty much
unanimous” when it came to this year’s
choice – SK Perry’s Let Me Be Like Water.
Hutchings had previously had her eye on Perry
as a promising young poet; in 2013 she was
longlisted for London’s Young Poet Laureate
and was later a resident artist at Camden’s
Roundhouse. “So when I heard she had just
published her first novel and it was set in
Brighton I got quite excited.”
The novel tells the story of twenty-something
Holly who impulsively moves to Brighton
from London as she grieves the death of her
boyfriend. Lost and alone, it is only when she
meets retired gay magician Frank that the
tide begins to turn. As she is introduced to his
eclectic group of friends, all with their own
stories to tell, she starts to heal. “You can tell
she’s a poet,” remarks Hutchings. “There’s a
sparseness and lyricism to the language she
uses and it’s incredibly moving. Parts of it
made me cry. But then there’s
also humour, there’s punch;
you really feel for the central
character.”
The novel is not a “pedestrian
read”, says Hutchings, but
she is confident the thousands
who take part in City Reads
every year will embrace it. In
its 14-year history City Reads
has highlighted titles ranging
from Matt Haig’s tonguein-cheek
sci-fi The Humans
to Ali Smith’s challenging,
post-modern novel Hotel World;
Bethan Roberts’ Brighton-set
love story My Policeman to Rose Tremain’s
groundbreaking Sacred Country – and not
forgetting the year they outraged fans by
choosing Ian Fleming’s From Russia With
Love. “A lot of our hardcore fans were appalled
and didn’t like it at all,” says Hutchings. “But
generally, the lovely thing about our readers
is that they’re pretty up for anything. People
who love reading tend to like recommendations
from other people who love reading.”
Nione Meakin
A range of events will support the city-wide
reading group, including a book swap at Jubilee
Library from 5pm on World Book Night (April
23), when book-lovers are encouraged to bring
a beloved title to swap; a live interview with
SK Perry by fellow poet Bridget Minamore
at Brighton Festival on May 12 and Amongst
Friends, a special literary salon on May 2 where
four writers are invited to read from books that
explore friendship – one of the themes of Let Me
Be Like Water. collectedworks.co.uk
....47....

4 – 26 May
Young
Brighton
Festival
COLOUR OUT OF SPACE
INTERNATIONAL EXPERIMENTAL
SOUND AND ART FESTIVAL
26th - 28th April 2019
From infants to Instagrammers,
Brighton Festival is packed with
opportunities for younger people
to get involved - find out more at
brightonfestival.org
Illustration ©
Simon Prades
www.colouroutofspace.org

THEATRE
.............................
Rotterdam
A trans story on stage
When director Donnacadh O’Briain first
came across Jon Brittain’s Rotterdam in a pile
of scripts still to be read at new writing hub
Theatre 503, he knew he had found something
special. The story is, at heart, a simple one:
Alice is finally about to come out to her
parents when her long-term girlfriend Fiona
announces that she is transgender and wants
to transition to live as Adrian. What follows is
a wry and bittersweet exploration of identity,
sexuality and love. “It just kept making me
cry,” says O’Briain. “Even when I read it out
loud with other people I would keep having
these moments when I had to stop and pretend
I was about to cough or something. I was very
affected by it. I found myself really fascinated
by these people and the difficulty of their
situation.”
Brittain, who also wrote cult hit show Margaret
Thatcher Queen of Soho and the Fringe First
Award-winning A Super Happy Story (About
Feeling Super Sad) was inspired to write
Rotterdam after a friend transitioned from
female to male when they were both in their
20s. The same friend later acted as a script
consultant on the production, along with
input from many other people from the trans
community. “The storyline is a very central
theme in the lives of trans people – it’s a
difficult situation for a lot of couples. But there
are elements of universality too because it’s
a story about what happens to a couple when
something major enters their relationship; it
could be a child or an affair. It’s essentially
about whether a couple can survive something
really difficult.”
Rotterdam premiered at Theatre 503 in 2015
and transferred to New York and then the
West End before winning an Olivier award
in 2017. Does O’Briain feel it was the right
play at the right time? “To me it seemed like
a real story about real people but one that
wasn’t being presented. When you see that,
it’s always a play for now because it must mean
a story is being sidelined or censored in some
way. But it became apparent as we approached
the production that there was a shift in the
movement towards recognition of trans people
and in the level of understanding about what it
means to be trans. I felt we were in a position
to not just be seen as a fringe event but as part
of a much bigger conversation.”
It is now touring the UK, including a stint
at Brighton’s Theatre Royal. Touring is
important, says O’Briain: “Because these are
characters in a situation that is not one people
understand as everyday. We’ve seen such
positive things happening when people have
watched it in London and in New York and we
aspire to create the same feelings and changes
in people’s outlook on the tour but we’ll just
have to wait and see what happens.”
Nione Meakin
Theatre Royal Brighton, April 8–10.
....49....

Experience Horrible Science activities this Easter holiday
6 – 22 April
For details visit kew.org/wakehurst
Horrible Science® is a registered trademark of Scholastic Ltd. And is used under authorization. All rights reserved.
Based on the bestselling books written by Nick Arnold and illustrated by Tony De Saulles. Illustration copyright
©Tony de Saulles. Licensed by Scholastic Children’s books through Rocket Licensing Ltd.
ISLAND OF THE
HUNGRY GHOSTS
7 APRIL
CHINA PLATE &
STAATSTHEATER MAINZ
CHRIS THORPE
STATUS
9 APRIL
HE XIANGYU
THE SWIM
14 APRIL
APPARAT
26 APRIL
APRIL
01273 678 822
attenboroughcentre.com
University of Sussex, Gardner Centre Road, Brighton BN1 9RA
HIGHLIGHTS

NATURE
.............................
Surviving or thriving
Exploring the state of the world’s plants at Wakehurst
If your grandparents ever told you that bananas
don’t taste like they used to, it turns out they
were right. They might have developed a taste
for the Gros Michel, a variety that was all but
wiped out in the 1950s by the fungus Fusarium.
It was replaced by a resistant cultivar, the
Cavendish, that we all know today, but all
monocultures are susceptible to disease and
the Fusarium fungus has evolved a deadly new
strain to which the Cavendish has no resistance.
The race is on to find a replacement.
It is research like this that is going on at Kew
and in plant science laboratories the world
over, and the subject of a new exhibition –
Surviving or Thriving – at the Millennium Seed
Bank at Wakehurst.
“Scientists at Kew are involved with the Crop
Wild Relatives project, which is looking for
wild relatives of vegetables, fruits and grains
that we know exist all over the world,” explains
Astrid Krumins, Interpretation Manager at
Wakehurst. “We’re looking for traits that
might have been bred out over time, like
resistance to pathogens and good water use.
Commercial crops like cotton and maize need
huge amounts of water to grow, so, if we can
selectively breed them with varieties that need
less, we can continue to grow them as the
climate changes.”
This is just one strand of the interactive
exhibition that draws on Kew’s landmark State
of the World’s Plants reports. “It’s a real mix of
news,” says Astrid. “Surviving and thriving
are relative terms and good or bad depending
on your view point. Some plants that are
thriving are things we may not want. Invasive
plants like Rhododendron Ponticum which
was introduced to the UK in Victorian
times and is now taking over huge areas
of Downland.” Other plants we are only just
beginning to understand. “We are still finding
new plants; around 2000 a year are discovered
in a scientific sense, which is different from
stumbling across a plant in your garden or on
holiday.”
If you haven’t visited the Millennium Seed
Bank before, you might be surprised to
discover that it looks more like a NASA
research facility than a greenhouse. As its
name suggests, it was built to store seeds
from all over the world – an underground
ark preserving plant genetics for future
generations – but it is also a hub of scientific
activity, conservation and propagation. Visitors
to the exhibition can watch the scientists at
work in their glass-walled laboratories whilst
learning about the kinds of research going on
inside. How plants are changing to cope with
an uncertain and more extreme climate; about
the threats they face from pests, pathogens
and illegal trafficking; about their diverse uses
from medicine to Marmite, and cutting edge
innovations in genome sequencing.
It’s a fascinating insight into the power and
potential of plants to tackle the challenges of
a rapidly changing world, and
how, of course, their survival and
ability to thrive is inextricably
linked to our own.
Lizzie Lower
kew.org/wakehurst
....51....

Award-winning independent
3 screen cinema
Next to Lewes station
Pinwell Road, Lewes BN7 2JS
01273 525354
lewesdepot.org

THEATRE
.............................
Bryony Kimmings
Autobiographical activist
I get the sense, trying to get hold of Bryony Kimmings,
that she’s a busy woman. Which is what
you might expect for someone who bills herself,
on her website, as ‘director, activist, musician, performance
artist, comedian, writer, theatre maker,
feminist, playwright, loudmouth’.
I finally nail her down when she’s sitting still in
the same place for an hour – on the 14.48 to Victoria.
She’s going up to London from hometown
Brighton for a performance of I’m a Phoenix, Bitch
at the Battersea Arts Centre, where it’s enjoying
a second run before a five-show Brighton Fringe
stint at the Attenborough Centre, at the University
of Sussex, in May.
“It’s the story of one woman surviving the most
traumatic year of her life, in which she gets sick
and she loses her mind to a psychosis,” she tells
me. That woman is Bryony herself: in 2015
she suffered from a crushing case of post-natal
depression, during which she lost her partner and,
very nearly, her child.
Her career, too, was jeopardised. Bryony had
made a real name for herself with well received
shows such as Seven Day Drunk, in which she
examined the effect of alcohol on creativity by
boozing from 10am to 7pm then performing, and
Credible Likeable Popstar, in which she acted out
her nine-year-old niece’s fantasy celebrity, with
the resulting pop songs getting Radio 1 airtime.
But then “I got it so badly that I stopped going
on stage. I was just terrified and really underconfident,
it’s taken a lot to change that narrative in
my head.”
The very act of creating I’m a Phoenix, Bitch
helped her come through the crisis. “[I’ve used]
theatre as a sort of cathartic therapy for both myself
and the audience to look at who we become
after something traumatic happens, and how you
repair yourself after that,” she says. The first run
was a tremendous five-star success: Time Out
described it as a ‘metaphysical glitter cannon of
trauma being fired straight at your chest’.
In the show she displays much of the versatility
she’s famous for: I’m a Phoenix is part musical,
part pop video, part horror film, with Bryony
playing various versions of herself, while battling
with her interior monologue, which takes the
voice of “a straight, white, misogynistic, middle-class,
male TV drama exec.”
She has described herself in the past as a ‘washing
your dirty laundry in public sort of girl’ and she
calls this “a baring of the soul”. This soul-baring,
it seems, comes naturally: “The ability to deconstruct
the self and be able to talk about things that
people really don’t want to talk about, that’s just
very inherent in my family.”
But is there the danger, I wonder, as the train
pulls into the station, of Bryony straying into
self-obsession territory? She thinks of herself
more as an ‘autobiographical activist’, it seems.
“If I sacrifice my own secretiveness, it might help
other people… I’m sent to be the jester, so the
world can change.” Alex Leith
ACCA, 3rd-7th May
....53....

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your meal and a complimentary bellini!
Offer runs until September 1st.
20 New Rd, Brighton BN1 1UF
www.polpo.co.uk | @polpo

THEATRE
.............................
Glengarry Glen Ross
Mark ‘The Machine’ Benson
I’ve heard that the David
Mamet play Glengarry Glen
Ross – also, of course, a
Hollywood movie – contains
so many swear words, that in
the acting world it’s acquired
the nickname ‘Death of a
F*****g Salesman’.
“We counted how many swear
words were used,” says Mark
Benson, who plays the role
of Shelley ‘The Machine’
Levene, so memorably
performed by Jack Lemmon in
the movie. “I had the most. It
came to 74.”
If you don’t know who Mark is, you probably
haven’t watched much TV over the last
20 years. He played Eddie in Early Doors,
Howard in Northern Lights, and Chalky in
Waterloo Road. He hosted the game show The
Edge, starred in the 2017 Marks & Spencer
Christmas ad, and reached round ten of the
2013 edition of Strictly Come Dancing. More
recently, he’s played the private detective Frank
Hathaway in the BBC series Shakespeare &
Hathaway. He’s big, he’s scruffy, and, hailing
from Teesside, he’s irrevocably northern.
But not in Glengarry Glen Ross. “The play is
set in the cut-throat world of salesmen, selling
plots of land, near Chicago,” he says, “so I’ve
learnt to do a Chicago accent… The David
Mamet script has us all speaking really fast –
like people do in real life – so it’s been really
hard to learn. It’s probably the hardest part
I’ve ever had to do on stage: but when we get it
right it’s brilliant, it just goes like a train.”
Mark is the most recognisable name in a cast
of seven, but he feels that this is very much
an ‘ensemble’ production.
“What’s nice about it,” he
says, “are that there are
no egos at work. Everyone
has their moment to shine,
so everybody’s satisfied,
everybody’s happy with what
they’ve got to do. We’re like
a little gang, going round the
country.”
Mark’s character is in trouble:
Shelley Levene used to be the
top man in the sales team, but
he’s having a run of bad luck,
his leads are lousy, and he’s
facing the sack. Meanwhile,
his daughter’s ill, and the medical bills are
mounting. I wonder how easy Mark finds it to
unburden himself of his character’s problems,
once he’s finished performing the role. Or
has he been taking all Levene’s pent-up
frustrations home with him?
“That could be a problem, he says, “especially
with a heavy role, like this one. But I’ll tell
you what. When I’d just started out, I worked
with Mike Leigh. You improvised with Mike,
and he always had a cut-off point where he
said ‘come out of character.’ So you’d come out
of character, and then you’d talk about that
character, objectively. From then on, I’ve been
able to become myself again when I wanted to.”
So did all the profanities not leak into Mark’s
day-to-day conversations? “Oh, that. It became
second nature, to tell you the truth. I went
home once, after rehearsals, and my wife said:
‘would you please stop swearing so much?’ It
took a while to get back to normal.”
Alex Leith
Theatre Royal, April 22nd-27th
....55....

PODCASTS
.............................
Wave Festival
Pick’n’mix podcasts
Angela Barnes appears with Richard Herring in the Leicester Square podcast at TOM
Given the rising popularity of podcasts over
the last few years perhaps it’s only natural that
there should be a festival in Brighton dedicated
to them. Wave is a two week programme of
events at venues across the city featuring some
of the UK’s favourite podcasts recorded live, in
front of an audience.
Local promoters One Inch Badge have been
putting on gigs in Brighton for years, but this
is the first time they’ve turned their attentions
to the art of talking. For Wave, they were able
to drill down into the data to find out what
people in the city are listening to.
“Brighton is hugely up for this kind of
content,” explains festival programmer
Ollie Catchpole. “These are all
shows that I listen to, but they
are shows that we know local
people listen to as well. There
are a couple of other podcast
festivals around the country,
but we wanted to make sure
that Brighton had its own
version. We wanted to be one
of the first to present a whole
festival with some of the most
popular podcasts out there.”
On April 3rd, Richard Herring
brings a version of his longrunning
Leicester Square podcast to
The Old Market for a double set,
one with Brighton-based comedian
Angela Barnes. The week after,
Romesh Ranganathan comes to the
Theatre Royal to interview Rag ‘N’
Bone Man for a special edition of Hip
Hop Saved My Life. Other shows in the
programme take a light-hearted look
at subjects such as parenting, films, lifestyle
tips and historical mysteries. “Because it’s the
first time we’ve done this we wanted to offer a
variety of different genres that anybody could
pick up on. We’re giving people a chance to
be a part of these conversations and see them
in a radio show environment. Most podcasts
don’t launch with the idea of going out live, but
some like No Such Thing as a Fish do massive
rooms and Brett Goldstein [who hosts Films to
be Buried With] tours constantly. Then we have
smaller shows like Unexplained that are doing
their first ever live event.”
On the strength of early ticket sales the
organisers have already announced plans
to turn Wave into an annual fixture. But
what explains the popularity of podcasts
in the first place?
“I think it’s because they’re so userfriendly,”
says Ollie. “It’s the same
as having a music library. There’s
such a variety out there, and people
can pick and choose what they
download and listen to without
having to rely on the radio.
“I’m a huge podcast fan myself. It’s
like any new format, it takes a while
for people to understand what it is.
But some of the podcasts now, with
people like Simon Mayo and Mark
Kermode, they’re absolutely huge. I
think audiences are warming, in vast
numbers, very quickly to the idea of
podcasting. People can approach it
quite easily now, because everyone
has a smart phone. It’s there in
front of them.” Ben Bailey
brightonpodcastfestival.co.uk
....56....

PODCASTS
.............................
NO SUCH THING AS A FISH
Tues 2nd, Brighton Dome, 7.15pm, £21
One of the
biggest
podcasts
going, No
Such Thing
As A Fish,
started out
five years ago
as a fun side project by the researchers from
the TV panel show QI. Since then they’ve
won numerous awards, sold out the Sydney
Opera House and bizarrely released an album
of their first 52 podcasts on vinyl. The team of
four typically take turns to share facts they’ve
learned that week, each responding with quick
gags or even weirder nuggets of knowledge.
And, no, technically speaking, fish don’t exist.
The show is highly entertaining, potentially
educational and not as nerdy as it sounds.
THE RECEIPTS
Sun 7th, Sallis Benney Theatre, 7.30pm, £15
“It’s a WhatsApp group
chat come to life,”
says Audrey Indome,
discussing the broad
appeal of the Radio
1Xtra podcast she hosts
alongside Tolani Shoneye
and Milena Sanchez. Realising there was
nothing out there that connected with the
experiences of black British women, the group
got together after another podcaster claimed a
show like this wouldn’t be possible. Clearly, they
were wrong. The Receipts is three women talking
honestly and openly about... well, whatever
they feel like. The group’s refreshingly frank
banter covers plenty of ground from race and
relationships to daily frustrations and sexual
misadventures – all peppered with pop culture
references and everyday swearing. There’s
occasional group singalongs as well.
FILMS TO BE BURIED WITH
Sun 7th, The Old Market, 7.45pm, £16
This podcast does for
movies what Desert
Island Discs does for
music – but with a
macabre twist. “I’m
sorry to tell you this,
but you’ve died,” Brett
Goldstein informs his
guests, before encouraging them to furnish
the details. “How did it happen?” Goldstein is
a stand-up who’s appeared in Doctor Who and
Derek, but here he takes a backseat as his guests
discuss their favourite films. The show often
takes a nostalgic turn through movies both
great and naff, and sometimes even dips into
reflections on mortality. Previous guests have
included Ricky Gervais, Katherine Ryan and
Scroobius Pip. For Wave he’ll be chatting with
Asim Chaudhry from BBC comedy People Just
Do Nothing.
THE BUGLE
Fri 12th, The Old Market, 7.45pm, £17
On the podcasting
timeline The Bugle
is the dinosaur that
refused to die. First
commissioned way
back in 2007 by The
Times, Andy Zaltzman’s comedy news podcast
was originally a co-production with John
Oliver before the latter became a TV staple
in America. Now an independent show with
a long roll-call of comedy guests, The Bugle
examines current affairs through the lens of
Zaltzman’s deadpan humour. His scattershot
approach and love of wordplay means every
topical skit is linked by endearingly silly
detours. It’s like Radio 4’s The Now Show, only
funnier and more freewheeling. As the blurb
explains, it’s full of ‘freshly-hewn satire, lies,
puns and high-grade bullshit’. Ben Bailey
....57....

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with over 800 arts and craft short courses
Expert tutors and fully equipped workshops | Inspiring surroundings
www.westdean.ac.uk
West Dean College of Arts and Conservation,
Chichester, West Sussex PO18 0QZ
MANIFESTO
LAUNCH
North Gallery, University of Brighton
Saturday 6 April | 17.00 – 19.00
Join us for the launch event of our ten-year vision
for new ways of thinking about art and art history
in education.
On Saturday 6 April at the University of Brighton’s
North Gallery. The manifesto builds on the work
of the Association for Art History to develop new
exchanges and collaborations across the arts,
education and society. Free and open to all.
@forarthistory
www.forarthistory.org.uk

THEATRE
.............................
To Begin The World Again
Ian Ruskin on his Life of Thomas Paine
Your one-man play gives an
airing to Tom Paine’s life
and ideas. How did you go
about writing it? Is much
of it in his own words? I
began by reading (most) of his
writings: a long list! Then,
biographies – starting with
the first. This gave me a clear
idea of the changing attitudes
to the man over time. And I
was lucky enough to have five
leading Paine scholars review
my writings and point me in the right direction.
Yes, much is in his words. I present them within
the context of when they were written.
It’s striking that Paine was read by so many,
and rejected by so many (only six people
at his funeral). Was he, above all, a plain
speaker – thus, a threat to all as a threat to
the status quo? Exactly! What made Paine
dangerous to the establishment was his ability
to use language that the ‘common man’ could
understand and find inspiring. He wrote in
short, simple sentences and his works, beginning
with Common Sense, broke all sales records. At
the same time, he attacked slavery, the power of
monarchy, and organised religion – particularly
through a scathing review of the Bible. No
wonder he had as many enemies as friends!
You’re interested in extraordinary people?
Nikola Tesla, Tom Paine, Harry Bridges.
What do they have in common? To my
mind, each is, in his own way, a genius. They’re
certainly among the most maligned, misused
and misunderstood men in history – a line
from the play. Their visions and aims were
Photo by Tom Dempsey
to revolutionise the systems
they lived in and bring about
a world with greater equality,
democracy and power to the
people. No wonder their
legacies have been so efficiently
suppressed and distorted.
Why is it important to you
to tell their stories? Living as
an actor in Los Angeles, and
working mainly in television,
I grew tired of playing the
intelligent bad guy in shows
such as Murder She Wrote and MacGyver. The
discovery of these men changed my life. I had
found stories that I believed in, that meant
something to me, and that took me back to the
reason that I wanted to be an actor in the first
place. Now I get to tell them across America,
in Canada, Hawaii, Australia and England,
including Lewes, where Paine spent so many
important years of his life.
Have you been to Lewes? Once before.
My last three years in England I lived in
Sharpthorne, Sussex, and in 1984 my girlfriend
and I came to Lewes for Guy Fawkes night. I
had never seen such a combination of pageantry
and rebellion, and in such a beautiful English
country town. The celebration of the fact that
he was caught (the burning at the stake) and
that he nearly pulled it off (the fireworks) –
that, at least, is my interpretation. I’m eager to
return, if not with the same pageantry, at least,
I hope, with some of the rebellion!
Interview by Charlotte Gann
Attenborough Centre, 25th, 4.30pm,
All Saints Centre, Lewes, 27th, 7.30pm
....59....

Contemporary
British Painting and
Sculpture
We look forward to welcoming
you to our gallery in Hove.
OPENING TIMES
Mon—Sat 10.30am—5pm
Sunday/bank holidays 12pm—5pm
Closed Tuesday
For more details visit
CAMERONCONTEMPORARY.COM
CCA_VivaLewes_Advert_66x94_June2018_v1.indd 1 17/06/2018 09:0

ART
.............................
Kitchen Still Life, 1948 by William Scott
© Estate of William Scott 2019, Image courtesy of Southampton Art Gallery
In Colour - Sickert to Riley
Exhibition at Charleston
In Colour – Sickert to Riley is the second exhibition
in the new Wolfson Gallery at Charleston.
Curated by the textile designer Cressida Bell, it
runs until the 26th of August. Thirty one paintings
by thirty one twentieth century British artists,
all engaging with colour in their sometimes very
different ways.
While evoking ‘a grey dusty withered evening
in London city’ in Our Mutual Friend, Dickens
conjures up a wonderful phrase – ‘the national
dread of colour’. And indeed, we often seem
to have had an ambivalent attitude to colour.
Reviewing the 1910 New English Art Club
exhibition, Huntley Carter identifies and praises
a small group of ‘colourists’ within the club’s
ranks – Lucien Pissarro, Harold Gilman, Robert
Bevan and Spencer Gore (the last two also feature
in Cressida Bell’s show). However, he then
cautions that ‘three fourths of the human race
are unaffected by colour, except in a hostile form.
Pure, clean colour arouses in their honest bosoms
an exasperation only equalled by that called forth
by the so-called indecent forms of art.’
I don’t know whether Cressida Bell would agree.
Viva Lewes readers may remember the (very colourful)
cover she did for the February 2019 issue.
In the accompanying interview with Joe Fuller, she
expressed a wish that people would try wearing
....61....

ART
.............................
Portrait of a Girl, 1912 by Mark Gertler. © Tate, London 2019
....62....

ART
.............................
Warm Up, Cool Down by Wilhelmina Barns-Graham
Courtesy of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust
more colour, ‘because it’s so life enhancing’. So
perhaps we’re not there just yet. But it would be
wrong to see the Charleston exhibition as any
part of a colour crusade. True, there are big bold
pictures just bursting with colour by the likes of
Terry Frost and Howard Hodgkin. It would be
surprising if they weren’t featured. But I think
Cressida Bell is trying to do something rather
subtler, choosing paintings where the arrangement
of colours, the patterns, the colour balance
are paramount. This might explain the presence
in the show of artists such as Charles Ginner,
Ethel Sands and Sickert, especially Sickert, that
you would not associate primarily with colour.
And as she said in the Viva Lewes interview: ‘I’m
trying to look for works of art where you can
tell that the artist has superimposed colours on
the painting, rather than actually seeing them.’
This would apply, for example, to Stanislawa de
Karlowska’s At Churchstanton, Somerset.
What, I suspect, is of primary importance to
Cressida Bell is that we have a totally unmediated
response to the paintings. So, for example,
no distracting captions. If you want to know the
identity of the painter, the name of the picture,
where it’s usually to be found, you have to refer
to the printed handout. Even on that, Cressida
Bell’s thoughts on individual paintings, and there
are only a handful of these, are so tentative as
to be positively endearing. It’s all tremendously
refreshing.
One criticism. The walls of the gallery have
been painted in four different colours, especially
for the exhibition. Far from enhancing the
paintings, it positively distracts from them, from
the colour in the paintings. A disastrous decision?
I think so, but perhaps it wasn’t Cressida Bell’s
idea. And maybe I’m just wrong. David Jarman
info@charleston.org.uk
The Pond at Charleston by Vanessa Bell. Estate of Vanessa Bell
courtesy of Henrietta Garnett and The Charleston Trust
Oranges and Quinces by Robert Dukes.
Courtesy of Robert Dukes
....63....

ART
....................................
ART & ABOUT
In town this month...
‘It’s pretty inconvenient having more than half your
garden a mile or more away but there’s some magic about
allotments that is uniquely theirs,’ writes artist Kate
Osborne of her Brighton allotment. ‘They straddle the
boundary between wild and cultivated... If I get there early
enough in spring I am greeted by a hearty dawn chorus,
and I can sit with a cup of tea and watch the occasional
ship pass across the distant V of the English Channel.’
Drawing inspiration from the joys of this oasis, Allotment
– an exhibition of Kate’s vibrant, abstract watercolours – is at 35 North gallery from 6th-27th April.
(Open Thurs/Fri/Sat 11am-5.30pm)
Brighton’s festival of international experimental music and art -
Colour Out of Space – returns for an eighth edition from 26-28th
April. Described as ‘three packed days of high sonic weirdness,
performance and audio innovation’, the programme features sound
poets, noise artists, electro minimalists, cassette manipulators,
avant-rockabillies and free-guitarists. If that’s not sufficiently
intriguing, there’s a free daytime arts trail with installations and
performances at Brighton landmarks like the Pepperpot, the littleknown
Tarner Tower and the Open Market. Sound art radio station
Resonance FM hold a ‘free university’ on Friday the 26th at
Phoenix Brighton, and ONCA host the first ever UK exhibition
by Finnish multidisciplinary artist Jan Anderzen. There are
workshops and films too. See colouroutofspace.org for details.
....64....

ART
....................................
Luella Martin is the artist in focus at Cameron
Contemporary this month. She produces her prints of the
local landscape with solar plate etching – an eco-friendly way
of working which uses sunlight and tap water to process lightsensitive
plates without the need for harmful chemicals. She
often combines her printed images with loose gestural painting,
blurring the boundaries between the two media.
‘Mad Hatter’ From 2013 ©
Tessa Hallmann/Royal Pavilion
& Museums, Brighton & Hove
Chinoiserie-on-Sea – the extraordinary exhibition of hats by Stephen Jones –
continues at the Royal Pavilion. More than 150 hats from across Stephen’s fortyyear
career as a top-flight milliner are on display throughout the royal pleasure
palace. Created for anyone who is anyone, from pop stars to couture houses, the
whimsical creations are perfectly suited to their exotic surroundings. (Quite literally)
fantastic! Continues until 9th June. (Free with admission.)
Brighton & Hove Arts Council has been in existence since 1974 and this
month they hold their Annual Spring Exhibition at the Friends Meeting
House, from Wednesday the 10th until Saturday the 13th of April. More
than 100 works in a diverse range of media will be on display, drawn from
members of the B&H Arts Council, Attic Art Club, St Thomas More Art
Group and the Brighton branch of the Embroiders’ Guild. (Open 10am-
5pm on the 10th-12th and 10am-4pm on the 13th. Free entry.)
Man in a Deckchair by Sandra Emery
Brighton artist/illustrator Lisa Holdcroft’s cards, puzzles and prints capture Brighton in glorious,
loony-toon detail; the closer you look, the more you see. This month, her latest work – a 12-footlong
panorama of the West Pier (below) as it was in its heyday – goes on display at The West Pier
Centre (by the i360). Complete with daring divers, performing dogs and floating tea parties, it
includes all sorts of seaside antics and curious characters for you and the kids to discover. Opens on
the 19th of April and continues throughout the summer. (Free. Open Fri-Mon, 11am-5pm.)
....65....

Artists Open Houses
Brighton & Hove, along the Coast, over the downs to Ditchling and beyond
Weekends 4-26 May 2019 aoh.org.uk

ART
....................................
Out of town
©www.leemiller.co.uk
Farleys House, gallery and sculpture
garden – the Sussex home of Roland
Penrose and Lee Miller – opens for the
season on Sunday the 7th of April, and then
every Sunday until the 27th of October,
with guided tours setting off every half hour
from 10.30am. In Farleys gallery is Deanland;
a collaborative project between the artist,
Alexander Johnson and photographer, John
Brockliss, who together documented the
ghostly WWII Sussex airfield.
The Weekend Book (by Francis Meynell)
Dust Jacket (1926) Private Collection
Draw Me In –
Towner’s annual
schools’ exhibition –
opens on Friday the
6th of April. Open
to all local children
and young people
aged from 0 to 21,
the call for works
went out last October and the entrants have
been busily making in artist-led workshops
at schools, in the community and at the
gallery. The fruits of their creative labours,
in a multitude of sizes and formats, will be
on display until the 2nd of June.
There’s a last chance to
see the extraordinary
maps of Max Gill at
Ditching Museum
of Art + Craft. The
exhibition of work by the
well-known illustrator,
letterer, map-maker,
architect and decorative
artist closes on the 28th of April.
British painter Harold Gilman produced a view
of modern urban life in the early 20th century
that was entirely distinct. He combined the gritty
formality favoured by the Camden Town Group
and his mentor Walter Sickert with the vitality of
post-impressionism, with its thickly-applied paint
and vivid colours. His paintings infused scenes of
everyday domestic life and captured a moment
in time around the First World War when
perceptions of gender, class and urban living were
rapidly changing. Pallant House gallery is home
to an exhibition of over 50 works by the artist
whose career spanned just 15 years, before his
untimely death during the influenza pandemic at
the age of 43. Continues until 9th of June.
Tea in the Bedsitter 1916, Kirklees Collection,
Huddersfield Art Gallery
....67....

ART
.............................
Paris 68 Redux
50 years on and nothing has changed
It started, like most
good projects, as a
drunken conversation.
We were looking at a
book of posters from the
May 1968 Paris uprising
– La Beauté est dans la Rue
– and a lot of the images
were still relevant. The
students were protesting
about capitalism, censorship,
the poor treatment
of immigrant workers…
I’m of that generation
that thought by the time
I got to 50, everything
would have changed for the better. That’s one
of the driving forces behind the Paris 68 Redux
project. We’re living with a more extreme
version of capitalism than they were. If anything,
we’ve got more to protest about.
The original posters were made by the group
of artists and students Atelier Populaire.
No one actually claims
authorship of the posters
but we wanted Philip
Vermés – one of the original
members of Atelier
Populaire and author of
the book – to know that
we were doing this project.
We tried calling him,
we tried emailing him
and eventually we turned
up on his doorstep in
Paris with a bunch of
posters. He said we
needed to come up with
our own stamp, which is
when we came up with Paris 68 Redux.
We started pasting up posters in Brighton
last year, on the anniversary of Paris 68, but
then it grew. We visited Berlin, where there’s
been a big fight with Google who wanted to
build a huge campus in Kreuzberg, the creative
centre of Berlin. Locals were really upset about
....68....

ART
.............................
it because rents doubled within a year. So we
reworked two of the ’68 posters, creating the
Google head, and an updated version of On Vous
Intoxique and pasted those in concentric circles
around Kreuzberg. They have a great attitude
to street art in Berlin. When you paste there,
people come up and ask you what the posters
mean and have a half-hour conversation.
Then we created posters and placards
for the Trump demonstration in London,
and we’ve just done paste-ups in two stores
in Brooklyn. We did a lot of new designs for
placards for the Brexit March on the 23rd of
March, and we’re doing something for Pride
in Manchester. With the Gilet Jaune movement
in France and what’s happening with
Trump and Brexit, it feels like a good time
to be doing this. 50 years on and nothing has
changed. That’s very much the point.
As told to Lizzie Lower
@paris68redux
....69....

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SUPPORTED BY

DESIGN
.............................
Brighton Map
Malcolm Trollope-Davis
“It’s certainly an exercise in focus
and patience,” says Malcolm
Trollope-Davis, creator of the
newly-launched, newly definitive,
Brighton Map. “I don’t
think of it as one drawing. It’s
thousands of small drawings.”
Malcolm’s map is sprawled out
in front of us on a café table – a
giant A0 print detailing the
many streets of Brighton &
Hove and pinpointing its notorious
residents, favourite pubs,
and dramatic historical events.
It’s impossible not to be
impressed with the sheer effort
and skilful draughtsmanship
that went into this. The Brighton
Map has more in common
with those of centuries ago than
it does Google Earth, in spite of
the fact the latter has made its
creation possible.
Malcolm drew the map entirely
freehand, beginning simply by
drawing a line. This became
the city’s main artery – North
Street and Western Road. Once
this was drawn, he worked in
concentric circles outwards, a
block at a time like you might
with a patchwork quilt.
The roads are miniaturised
somewhat – a street of maybe
50 houses is reduced to 15 or
20. “I don’t think it’s important
to draw every house,” he
explains. “If I did, I would be
copying an aerial photograph,
and those are actually very
boring to look at – not the
most emotive things.”
This approach, says Malcolm,
“makes everything bigger and
more visually engaging, and
yet everything is still in the
right place, so people can look
at a street and go, ‘that must be
my house.’”
The Brighton Map is sequel
to the Lewes Map which Malcolm
began after noticing that
Photo by Chloë King
....71....

DESIGN
.............................
....72....

DESIGN
.............................
there were so few town maps around,
and those that were, were stylised and
inaccurate. “I wanted to create the
ultimate, definitive map,” he says. “It’s
functional art, which is really important
to me.”
“You don’t get projects like this appearing.
It took me a year to draw. You
don’t get paid during that year, and for
someone to commission a project like
this, it would cost too much. The last
time you would have seen something
like this would have been back in the
1700s when manuscript hand-drawn
maps were state of the art. These days
it’s a much more frivolous, explorative
project.”
Now that the art prints, tea towels and
tote bags of the Lewes Map have sold in
their hundreds, the map’s popularity has
made Malcolm’s speculative endeavour
more than worthwhile. “It has allowed
me to do this…” says Malcolm, “…to
commission myself, effectively, which is
every artist’s dream.”
“It is almost like an old friend,” he says,
pointing at the bottom quarter of the
Brighton Map. “When I got down to
here, I felt what I can only describe as
separation anxiety because it was going
to be finished soon.”
Perhaps this is why Malcolm has
decided the Brighton Map will be a ‘live
artwork’. In time, he will add to it and
amend it to reflect the city’s development.
He also plans to create limited
editions to mark big occasions... Just
like the city itself, he says, the Brighton
Map, “is going to get busier and richer”.
Interview by Chloë King
brightonmap.com
Photo by Dörte Januszewski @lewesmap
....73....

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THE WAY WE WORK
This month, Adam Bronkhorst caught up with five local window cleaners.
He asked them: What’s the most interesting thing you’ve seen while cleaning windows?
adambronkhorst.com | 07879 401333
Matt Norman, Blue Skies Window Cleaning
‘A toddler who was pointing and telling me that I’d missed a bit from inside the house.
He followed me all around the house. Maybe I should’ve hired him on the spot!’

THE WAY WE WORK
Jason Minter, Aquaclean
‘A lady in her birthday suit who had not heard the doorbell before I started
the upstairs windows... thank goodness we now have reach and wash poles!’

THE WAY WE WORK
Matt Harrington, Hove Beach Window Cleaning
‘Probably someone dressed in full armour. Turned out they do re-enactments
of battles, but at the time it was rather random, even for Brighton.’

THE WAY WE WORK
Paul Bramhall, Hanover Window Cleaning
‘The diversity of the people.’

THE WAY WE WORK
Adrian Hulme, New Leaf Window Cleaning
‘The spectacular views that we have available to us. I am in a fortunate position
to see views which I wouldn’t otherwise be able to experience.’

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FOOD
.............................
The Roundhill
Vegan invention
The botanical and the industrial
collide in the newly redecorated
interior of The Roundhill. The
pub has recently been renamed
back to The Roundhill from
The Jolly Poacher – a popular
reversion according to the
staff I chat to. It feels light
and airy, but noisy enough
to be atmospheric, and there
are flowers on the tables,
illustrations on the walls, a
model aeroplane on the ceiling,
but nothing too overbearing.
The menu is wholly vegetarian,
and we are told that all of the dishes can be
made vegan. This prompted discussion between
me and my guest: vegan and vegetarian places
often seem to try harder to come up with new
ways to flavour and present food. Even as a
carnivore, I’m increasingly starting to seek out
nice vegan and vegetarian places, to explore the
invention on offer.
This Shackletonian spirit of exploration
certainly bore fruit at The Roundhill. The
cauliflower wings starter (£5.50) came
recommended so my friend plumped for that,
while I opted for the mushroom & tofu gyoza
(£6.50) with a coriander dip. The gyoza were
good: the wrapper was chewy, the mushroom
bits moreish. But the wings had a brilliant smoky
and sweet coating, and the cauliflower was
succulent. The cauliflower gazumped the gyoza!
It beggars belief: I love gyoza. A gyoza is an
oily indulgent treat whereas cauliflower is a sad
vegetable, to be tolerated rather than savoured…
right? No! Folly! It was also fun to eat healthily
while feeling like you’re eating something more
Photo by Nammie Matthews
indulgent, with the wings
designed to emulate buffalo
wings.
The main was similarly
revelatory for my dining
companion. She went for
The Roundhill Burger,
which included vegan
smoked gouda, gherkins,
fries and slaw (£12.50). She
raved about it being the
best vegan burger she’d ever
tried, explaining that it tasted
proteiny and even meaty,
feeling more substantial
and heartier than lesser vegetarian patties. “It’s
like sorcery!”, she exclaimed. We even liked the
vegan cheese, and having tasted it myself I can
confirm that it worked as a tasty burger.
I chose the green pesto tagliatelle with a winning
combination of good things: cashews, heritage
tomatoes, spinach and parmesan (£8.50). The
pesto (always a champion flavour) was subtle and
fresh: I enjoyed every mouthful of the simple
but effective main, while also appreciating a
deceptively deep plate.
We were too full to try out the vegan pancakes
on the dessert menu, a damned shame since the
candied pecans and hazelnuts called out to us
both. We settled for Scrabble and pints however,
with a strong selection of ales, lagers and ciders
to choose from, including Harvey’s Best and
a Gun Pale Ale. A welcoming pub and a great
restaurant, either for bites and beers (skin-on
fries for £3 is generous by Brighton standards),
or for a full meal with friends and family.
Joe Fuller
100 Ditchling Road, 01273 235884
....81....

RECIPE
.............................
Photo by Alex Leith
....82....

RECIPE
.............................
Bataka Poha
Naimesh, from Manju’s,
on a simple but tasty Gujarati rice dish
Our restaurant, Manju’s, is named after my
mother. She’s the chief inspiration behind
everything on our ever-changing menu which
offers traditional, entirely vegetraian Gujarati
food, and she still does a lot of the cooking.
Manju was born in India, but brought up in
Uganda, like a lot of Indians. She became famous
for being a brilliant cook – there’s no traditional
Gujarati dish she doesn’t know how to make,
having been taught by her mother, my nan.
In 1972 the family was deported by the Idi
Amin regime, and we came to live in London,
with just a suitcase full of belongings. Manju
got a job as a machine operator, which she
worked at till she retired.
Myself and my brother Jamie grew up to run a
lot of different businesses, first in London, then
in Brighton. But we always wanted to help my
mum run a professional kitchen and when this
place became available in 2017, we converted it
into an Indian restaurant. Her dream had come
true – at the age of 80.
We pride ourselves on serving our customers
authentic Gujarati food, and we don’t cut
any corners, making everything from scratch.
There’s room for no more than 24 customers,
and we have limited the group size to four, to
make sure everybody is given proper attention,
and served at the same time.
The experience, then, is very different from
what people might expect from a traditional
Anglo-Indian restaurant: we tend to get foodies
coming, expecting freshly cooked, authentic
food. A lot of our customers have spent time in
India; we like to treat them well, and they keep
coming back!
This dish, served hot or cold, is perfect as a
snack any time of the day, and is the sort of dish
that will be served as street food.
I’m no chef. With my brother, I deal with
all the other sides of the business. So for the
cooking instructions I’m going to hand you
over to Manju, and my wife Dee, head chef.
Method (serves one):
Heat up 1 tbsp of sunflower oil – we never use
ghee in savoury dishes – in a pan, and when it’s
hot add ½ tsp cumin seeds. If you like nuts, you
can sprinkle in some cashew nuts or peanuts
at this stage. When the cumin starts sizzling
add a finely-diced potato. Once that’s cooked
(when a fork goes through) add half a cup of
flattened rice, which has been rinsed to get rid
of the starch. Add one or two chopped chillies
(according to taste), 1½ tsp turmeric powder,
1½ tsp red chilli powder and 1 tsp sugar. Stir
with a wooden spoon, until it’s nice and hot,
and squeeze in some lemon.
As garnish, you can add sev noodles (the dry
crispy ones you get in Bombay mix), fresh
coriander, pomegranate seeds, anything that
takes your fancy, and serve with extra lemon
segments.
You can get everything you need in Asian
specialist grocers, but also, nowadays, at all the
big supermarkets. This is authentic Gujarati
snack food: it’s often on our menu, but you can
easily knock it up at home. Enjoy! Alex Leith
Manju’s, 6 Trafalgar St, 01273 231870
....83....

A-news bouche
Find us at 7 Church Street, Brighton, BN1 1US,
for breakfast and lunch.
Vegetarian and vegan options available.
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Tickets are now available for Brighton’s
Foodies Festival, returning to Hove Lawns
in May. Including live performances from
Queen tribute band Flash, Katy Hurt and
The Din, top chefs and MasterChef winners
cooking live, and sweet treats with The
Great British Bake Off winners. There will
also be the opportunity to sample
new wines, champagnes and
cocktails, delicious street food
from around the world and
more. 4th to 6th May,
foodiesfestival.com
Discover new approaches to sandwiches at
an All About Bao Buns session with Kitchen
Academy. You will make all sorts of bao
buns from Japanese sandwiches to Chinese
snowballs. 17th April, 6pm to 9pm, £45,
The Community Kitchen. The College
of Naturopathic Medicine present a
Fermentation Demonstration for healthy
guts, which will include introductions
to kombucha, milk and water kefir
and vegetable fermentation.
27th April, 10.30am to
12.30pm, £10, BACA,
naturopathy-uk.com
foodiesfestival.com
Fancy a delicious sandwich for lunch?
Crunch & Co is now open at 7 Church
Street and offers delicious deep-filled, grilled
sandwiches and speciality soups,
to eat in or take away.
Finally, London Road’s
Greek restaurant
Yefsis have opened a
second branch at 52a
Lansdowne Place.
....84....

FEATURE
.............................
StreetVet
Caring for animals on the street
StreetVet is a volunteer
service that supports
animals belonging to
people who are homeless:
dogs, in the vast majority
of cases. Launched by two
vets in 2016, StreetVet
is a registered practice
with the Royal College
of Veterinary Surgeons,
operating in multiple
locations around England.
We spoke to Hove
resident and StreetVet
volunteer Roz Wright, from the Brighton
branch – which has one of the largest workloads
nationwide – to find out more.
StreetVet Brighton runs alongside Sussex
Homeless Support’s regular soup kitchen at the
Clock Tower, every Sunday 1-3pm. “We hand
out food, treats, coats, harnesses and more to
people who need them for their pets. We’ll also
treat any dogs that need a check up. Sometimes
a dog might need emergency care during the
week, so their owner might message us about a
concern. Occasionally we’ll organise for them
to go to a practice if they need to be seen before
we can get to them. And we have an out-ofhours
service that can see them if it’s a critical
emergency at night”.
One important part of StreetVet’s work is to
counter the common perception that people
who are homeless should not own animals. “A
lot of the time those dogs have either come
along prior to them being homeless, or they’ve
been acquired as a result of the dog being in
worse circumstances, and the homeless person
is effectively rescuing them from that situation.
It can be very traumatic
for a dog who might
have spent all their life
with one person, albeit
on the streets, to then be
taken away and put into a
different environment that
they’re not used to, like
kennelling.
“We’ve also got quite a lot
of dogs who are medical
assistance dogs to their
owners, who can help
with things like seizure
assistance, PTSD, anxiety. So to remove that
animal from the owner would be distressing on
both sides. You don’t want to see a dog sitting
there looking sad in the cold, but actually a
lot of dogs are happier being with a person all
the time, being out and about, socialising with
people, rather than sitting at home while people
are at work. There’s pluses and minuses in both
camps really.”
Another aspect of StreetVet’s work is to build
relationships with people who are homeless, and
getting to the bottom of what treatment their
dogs might need. “A huge part of StreetVet is
gaining the trust of people who’ve had some
very difficult experiences. They’ve lost trust with
a lot of people. Having the same people coming
to see them makes a huge difference, so they can
convince them that their dog does need a blood
test, vaccination, or a micro chip for example”.
Joe Fuller
Donations are welcomed of dog food, toys, treats,
harnesses, leads, coats etc. Contact streetvet.
brighton@gmail.com if you are interested in
getting involved. streetvet.co.uk
....85....

FEATURE
.............................
Map from the 1849 Cresy report. Images courtesy of Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove
....86....

FEATURE
.............................
Brighton slums
The end of pigs in
Paradise Street
Carlton Hill area, prior to slum clearances.
An eminent local historian once said to me, “If
you really want to understand the history of a
town, have a look at the health reports.” It might
seem a strange suggestion, but if you’re interested
in the lives of ordinary people in Brighton in the
Victorian era – away from the grand crescents and
squares, theatres and promenades – health reports
make compelling reading.
The growth of Brighton in the 18th and early
19th centuries was driven by three key factors:
the popularity of sea bathing and the town’s
reputation as a health resort; its proximity to
London, and the patronage of the Duke of
Cumberland and, later, the Prince Regent. The
influx of affluent visitors created a demand for
services, and the people who provided these also
needed somewhere to live. Unlike the elegant
seafront properties, workers’ houses were small,
damp, badly ventilated and horribly overcrowded.
In 1848, local physician Dr William Kebbell
observed that the streets in deprived areas, in
particular those around Edward Street, were ‘a
disgrace to any civilised people’. Not surprisingly,
disease was rife.
Edward Cresy was appointed by the General
Board of Health to visit Brighton in 1849 to carry
out an ‘inquiry into the sewerage, drainage, and
supply of water, and the sanitary condition of
the inhabitants,’ after the passage of the Public
Health Act the previous year. Consider this
description, which introduced his street-by-street
report: ‘Many of the houses are wretchedly damp,
being constructed of inferior bricks, and mortar
made of sea sand. No methods are adopted for
getting rid of even the pluvial waters, and the
walls are covered with lichens; so that, added to
the want of drainage, a constant decomposition of
vegetable matter is going on.’
Cresy spent several days in Brighton and, during
his inspection, he would have come across
slaughterhouses in densely-populated streets, pig
yards kept ‘in a filthy condition’, shared privies,
and open cesspools that were rarely emptied. In
Carlton Hill, he noted, ‘the drainage and soakage
of the privies come down into the rooms and
ooze through the walls.’ In Paradise Street, ‘the
pigs are much complained of,’ while in nearby
Cavendish St, ‘the well water is turbid and
positively green in colour.’ He reported scarlet
fever in Richmond Square and Essex Cottages,
smallpox in St John’s Place, typhus in Chesterfield
Street and widespread sickness elsewhere. It’s
ironic that a town priding itself on its fresh sea
air should harbour such poverty and disease in its
back streets.
If some of these street names sound unfamiliar,
that’s because many have disappeared. The
houses in Chesterfield Street, for example, were
demolished in the 1890s and those in Paradise
Street 30 years later. Further slum clearances took
place in the 1930s, but not before the streets were
photographed by officers from the environmental
health department (above), creating a poignant
visual record for future generations. Meanwhile,
Cresy’s recommendations were slowly taken on
board; a new sewage system, widely considered a
feat of Victorian engineering, was completed in
1874 and is still in use today. Kate Elms
Cresy’s report, along with a wealth of related
material, can be viewed at The Keep, thekeep.info
....87....

吀 爀 愀 渀 猀 昀 漀 爀 洀 礀 漀 甀 爀 栀 漀 洀 攀 眀 椀 琀 栀 漀 甀 爀 昀 椀 渀 攀 猀 琀 焀 甀 愀 氀 椀 琀 礀
匀 㨀 䌀 刀 䄀 䘀 吀 洀 愀 搀 攀 ⴀ 琀 漀 ⴀ 洀 攀 愀 猀 甀 爀 攀 椀 渀 琀 攀 爀 椀 漀 爀 猀 栀 甀 琀 琀 攀 爀 猀 ⸀
琀 ⸀ ㈀ 㜀 アパート アパート アパート 㠀 㐀 ㈀
攀 ⸀ 挀 漀 渀 琀 愀 挀 琀 䀀 戀 攀 氀 氀 愀 瘀 椀 猀 琀 愀 猀 栀 甀 琀 琀 攀 爀 猀 ⸀ 挀 漀 ⸀ 甀 欀
眀 ⸀ 眀 眀 眀 ⸀ 戀 攀 氀 氀 愀 瘀 椀 猀 琀 愀 猀 栀 甀 琀 琀 攀 爀 猀 ⸀ 挀 漀 ⸀ 甀 欀

MY SPACE
.............................
Photo by Alex Leith
Keith Willcocks
Upper Gardner Street market stall holder
I’ve been running a stall in the Upper
Gardner Street Market on a Saturday since
the late 80s, and the place has changed a lot
over the years. It used to be a very crowded
antiques market. Back then it was crawling with
dealers. You’d have to get there by five in the
morning, and you’d be home by midday.
Now we don’t have to set up till 9am, and it
runs until 5pm. You’d think everyone would get
there early to get the best stuff, but it’s quiet in
the morning: peak time isn’t till after lunch.
The nature of what’s on offer has changed
completely. Now it’s all bric-a-brac, and food.
Until recently there was a lady in front of me
doing a roaring trade in cupcakes. She must have
made a fortune.
What I sell has changed over the years, too.
At first, I sold antiques, and then I moved into
vintage ladies’ clothing. Now I mostly sell
vintage furs and leather goods. I source most of
it in Northern France.
The customers have changed, as well. The
Japanese and Chinese always ask if they can take
a picture of me; the Italians love their brands,
and are keen on haggling. The British are a bit
more reserved, but most everyone will try to
beat the price down. That’s part of the game.
Most of my customers are young women
between the ages of 20 and 35. There are
older regulars, though, some of whom have been
coming for years and years. Most people who
come to the stall like to have a chat, but there
are a few ‘look won’t buy’ types who have a good
rummage and move on without saying anything.
....89....

MY SPACE
.............................
Photos by Lizzie Lower and Alex Leith
....90....

MY SPACE
.............................
All the stall holders are on first name terms,
and a lot of us have nicknames. I’m ‘Captain’
because of the sailing hat I wear. Stall holders
tend to stay around for the long haul, so the
market is like a social occasion for us.
That’s just as well, because times are hard.
All the Brexit uncertainty has led to people
being very careful with what they spend. In the
last five months sales have dropped off and off
and off. Winters are always difficult: this one
has been exceptionally so.
I have an arrangement with Steve, who runs
the stall next to me. He books the stalls from
the Council, and I give him and his stuff a lift in
the morning, in my Toyota High Ace van. The
Council, it must be said, have been very helpful
over the years with any concerns we’ve had.
The market has been going since 1843, and
Steve has been operating since then. Joking
apart, John, on the other side, has been
running a stall since he was a boy working
alongside his father, who went back to who
knows when.
The most expensive item I’ve ever sold? I
remember the occasion well. It was a Zandra
Rhodes dress, for £75. Happy days.
As told to Alex Leith
....91....

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FEATURE
.............................
Place and time
A time travel treasure hunt for Our Place
“No place is ever boring,”
says Jon Mason (pictured).
“Wherever you live you
know that something has
happened there, something
that has led to the design of
the streets and the names
they’ve been given. People
will have lived there before
you – and will live there
after you.”
As a professional storyteller, Jon is fascinated by
how events of the past impact on the present and
the future of specific landscapes, and how we tell
those tales; the blurry line, he says, between fact
and fantasy.
Last year he retold Brighton’s past through a
treasure trail at the Open Market. Visitors were
encouraged to go from stall to stall to pick up
clues and learn about the colourful heritage of
the city.
In May, as part of the Brighton Festival, he will be
doing something similar in Hangleton.
Children and their accompanying adults will be
able to discover more about the local buildings,
street names and former residents through
the Time Travel Treasure Hunt that starts at
Hangleton Community Centre.
But it’s more than a history tour. Jon, who
often incorporates myths and legends in his
storytelling, says: “We’re imagining that Magnus
Volk, the inventor of the Volk’s Railway in
Brighton, also created a time machine that’s been
lost and shattered across time.
“Meanwhile a local villain – based on a real
person in Brighton’s history – is trying to find the
pieces to put it together. So we’ll be travelling
through history, from the old fishing community
to Regency Brighton, maybe
even to the 1960s Mods and
Rockers and beyond, to try
to stop him.”
The event, part of the Our
Place community celebration
in Hangleton, has also had
input from academics and
undergraduate students from
the University of Sussex’s
History Department.
Jon, who studied for a Masters in History at
Sussex, says: “The students do a final-year project
that has to be public facing, so last year they
helped me to create content for the Brighton
Open Market. This year, not only will they do it
again, they’ll also produce material that audiences
can access digitally through their devices.”
The plan is that, in addition to being enthralled
by the excitement of the storytelling, audiences
can learn about local landmarks, such as St
Helen’s Church (reputed to be the oldest building
in Brighton), and an old train track that used to
take visitors from Brighton to Devil’s Dyke.
“I have always loved history, and did it as an
undergraduate degree many years ago in Wales,”
says Jon. “The great thing about studying for the
MA at Sussex was being reminded that history
isn’t only written by academics and historians.
We can all gather it, we can all write it. History is
simply about people’s experiences.”
Jacqui Bealing
Time Travel Treasure Hunt is on 25 May and
begins and ends at Hangleton Community
Centre. The duration is 90 mins. Recommended
for ages 6-12, accompanied by an adult. Our
Place is sponsored by the University of Sussex.
jonthestoryteller.com
....93....

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- 25% off food (not set menu) at ASK Italian Lewes
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and more big discounts at over 50 other
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You can become a Lewes FC owner, too,
for as little as £30/year: www.lewesfc.com/owners
You can save all of that in just one trip to
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It takes less than one minute to sign up.
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FEATURE
.............................
Lewes FC Academy
The future is bright…
“This Academy is absolutely
the real deal,” says
Charlie Dobres, Lewes
FC Director, sitting on
the grassy bank by the side
of the Dripping Pan pitch,
in the early spring sun.
There’s some big news,
which he’s clearly excited
about: Lewes FC have
teamed up with Plumpton
College in order to
expand their ‘Academy’ set
up, offering courses starting in September. I’m
here to find out more.
“We are offering young men and women, who
want to become professional footballers, the
chance to study for two years for their ‘A’ Levels
and BTEC,” he says, “whilst simultaneously receiving
intensive and high-level football coaching
from our team of experienced coaches.”
Seasoned Lewes FC-watchers might be
thinking ‘hang on, wasn’t there an academy
before? Didn’t it all get folded up?’ “Yes and
no,” says Charlie. “We had a boys’ academy,
where we used virtual educational providers to
teach the lads, here at the Dripping Pan, while
we provided the football training. This was
successful, with the likes of Ronnie Conlon and
Harry Reed making it to the first team. But for
financial reasons, we realised that wasn’t the
best model for the students or for us, so we had
to have a rethink.
“More recently we have been running an
academy for young women, which has been far
more successful, because we teamed up with
an academic establishment, Newman College.
Basically, they provide the education, and pay
us to do the football training. It’s a much more
sustainable model.” So
far Ava Rowbotham has
made it all the way to the
first-team squad; there
are sure to be others
behind her.
The link-up with
Newman will continue
for young women; the
courses at Plumpton
College will be on offer
for a new intake of both
sexes, though the Boys’
Academy won’t open its doors till 2020. Charlie
is negotiating with another local educational
establishment, so boys can also have a choice of
environments to study in.
“All the football training will take place at The
Rookery 3G training pitch on Ham Lane,” he
continues. “The girls will be given three training
sessions a week – like the first team players
– and a match. The coaches are of exceptionally
high quality. There’s Fran Alonso, the Lewes
FC Women’s manager, who used to coach the
likes of Wayne Rooney at Everton; there’s Simon
Parker, who used to be the manager of the
hugely successful Southampton Women’s team;
and there’s Jesus Cordon, another UEFA-qualified
coach.”
Lewes FC are not just in it for the sake of the
kids, of course. The best of these youngsters,
Charlie concludes, will graduate to play in the
first XI of both the men’s and women’s teams.
“We are doing what we can to nurture budding
talent, for the good of the players, and the good
of the club. This is the dawning of an exciting
new era.” Alex Leith
For more details, including of trials in April, see
lewesfc.com
....95....

WILDLIFE
.............................
Illustration by Mark Greco
Dunnock
A scandal in suburbia
“Anyway, I’m not one to gossip, but I flew down
to the bird table at number 30 yesterday and I
bumped into that house sparrow. You know how
sparrows love to chatter, well we got talking over
the fence. You know that Dunnock that lives in
the hedge at number 26? Well, she’s certainly
nothing to look at is she? But that’s Dunnocks
for you, all greys and browns. Not exactly the
most striking bird in the garden. Keeps herself
to herself.
“Well these Dunnocks aren’t like the rest of us.
All sexual equality they are. So in February it was
her who was first out there in the garden establishing
a territory. Then she started seeing this
fella who had a territory next door. Well, it was
all innocent enough but that’s when it all kicked
off. This other neighbouring Dunnock showed
up and he started strutting and serenading her
like he was bleedin’ Casanova. Well, her fella
was having none of it – there was fighting and
feathers everywhere and he soon saw him off.
But old Casanova didn’t give up – he sat in the
hedge warbling and wooing her. Well, when her
fella’s back was turned she was over there like
a flash, twirling her tail at him. In no time they
were ’avin’ a bit of ’ows yer father right under the
hedge. Then she flew straight back to her other
fella looking like butter wouldn’t melt in her beak
and then they went at it. It was then that the third
fella showed up and she snuck off with him too
for some rumpy-pumpy behind the pampas grass
in the front garden of number 24.
“Well, it was like this for the next week apparently.
She was at it 100 times a day! Gets my feathers
ruffled just thinking about it. By April she was
proudly sat in her nest incubating four sky blue
eggs which hatched into four little chicks. But the
thing was, all three of her fellas thought that they
were the father – so she had them all scrabbling
’round searching for bugs. Her babies must have
been the most well-fed chicks in the street. I
reckon that was her little game all along.
“But that wasn’t the end of it. It turns out that
her first fella was bringing bugs to another
Dunnock in the next garden who also had his
chicks. And the other two were the fathers of
another Dunnock’s chicks two gardens over. You
couldn’t make it up. There isn’t even a word for
what these Dunnocks get up to. Well, there is.
Polygynandry they call it. Scandalous I call it. If
the people of Brighton only knew what goes on
in their very own backyards.”
Michael Blencowe, Senior Learning & Engagement
Officer, Sussex Wildlife Trust
....97....

INSIDE LEFT: WASHINGTON STREET, HANOVER, 1920
.....................................................................................
They didn’t call Hanover ‘Muesli Mountain’ in
1920, when this picture was taken. This view,
looking north down Washington Street towards
Islingword Road, shows quite what a bleak area it
was back in the day.
One wonders who commissioned the picture – in
the James Gray Collection – to be taken. It surely
wasn’t a picture postcard.
Consider the year the photo was taken, and the
picture gets bleaker. Everybody in the town would
have known somebody who was killed or injured
in the war, but Washington Street was particularly
badly affected. Spare a thought for poor Arthur
and Jane Riddles, who lived at number 12, just
to the right of the place the photographer was
standing. They had two sons – both still in their
teens – killed in action within a few months of
one another in 1917. In March, 19-year-old James
‘died of wounds’ in Italy. In July his younger
brother Reginald – just 16 – went down with HMS
Vanguard, which was sunk at Scapa Flow.
Another war casualty was Frederick Cook, who
lived at number 23, with his wife Ethel. He was 28
when he was killed in Flanders, in April 1918.
Washington Street first appears in the directories
in 1864, when the Church of the Annunciation
was built on behalf of the Rev Arthur Wagner to
serve the working-class residents of the new area
of Hanover. At first there was a cluster of shops
and services around the church; the two rows of
terraces weren’t completed until 1889. Believe it
or not, these grimy houses were just 31 years old
when the picture was taken.
It’s a far cry from the Washington Street of today.
Hanover remained a poor – some might say slum
– quarter throughout the majority of the twentieth
century, but it was designated a ‘general improvement
area’ in the late 1960s, and, having escaped
the massive redevelopment of many other crowded
residential areas of Brighton, has undergone a
complete transformation of character.
Stand in this spot today and, all the road-clogging
cars apart, the view will be much jollier. You’ll see
the same bungaroosh-filled buildings, for sure, but
now painted in colourful pastel hues, and affordable
only to those who can stump up something in
the region of £400,000. Alex Leith
Many thanks to the Regency Society for letting us
use this image from the James Gray Collection.
regencysociety.org
....98....

Springfield Mews, Brighton, BN1
Guide Price £500,000 - £550,000
• 4 x four bedroom houses
• Gas fired central heating
• Contemporary kitchens with appliances
• Contemporary bathroom suites (1 en suite)
• A mixture of carpet and engineered oak floors
• Good size rear gardens
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Hamptons International Brighton and Hove
01273 230 230
hove@hamptons-int.com
hamptons.co.uk

Visit our shop and workshop
37 Gloucester Rd,
Brighton,
BN1 4AQ
01273 692110
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