While writ­ing my mother’s eulo­gy a few months ago, I real­ized that this year is the thir­ti­eth anniver­sary of the pub­li­ca­tion of my father’s book, Writ­ers in Sus­sex.

Sad­ly Bernard died at the end of 2005, but it was a won­der­ful expe­ri­ence work­ing with him on the book, one I’ll always remem­ber. I had just fin­ished a pho­tog­ra­phy course and he was look­ing for a project to occu­py him dur­ing his ear­ly retire­ment. Togeth­er we hatched a plan for a book that would allow us to explore the beau­ti­ful coun­ty of Sus­sex. Once we had the green light from the pub­lish­er, we began trav­el­ling across the coun­ty, track­ing down the homes of authors who had lived in Sus­sex.

While I pho­tographed the hous­es, dad would talk to the own­ers, neigh­bours and any­one else who might have infor­ma­tion about the local lit­er­ary his­to­ry. He often includ­ed their rem­i­nis­cences in the book. And if our painstak­ing research also led us into a pub (in search of infor­ma­tion, natch) then so much the bet­ter.

Lat­er, when I came to write a book of my own, about the ori­gins of atom­ic weapons, it was strange to recall the impres­sive state­ly home, Uppark, where HG Wells’ moth­er was house-keep­er and where her son was allowed to indulge his pas­sion for read­ing in the great library. Imag­ine Wells, the fan­tastist of the future, liv­ing here!

At Bur­pham, a seclud­ed and ancient vil­lage with­in sight of Arun­del cas­tle, we found no less than three hous­es that had once belonged to authors – the homes of Mervyn Peake, John Cow­per Powys and the bee-keep­er and pop­u­lar author Tick­n­er Edwardes. I’ve always loved Peake’s won­der­ful­ly strange writ­ing and illus­tra­tions. The views near Bur­pham across the riv­er to Arun­del Cas­tle are immense­ly evoca­tive of Gor­meng­hast and its bizarre inhab­i­tants. It’s a mag­i­cal part of the world. Peake is buried in Bur­pham church­yard and a line from one of his poems is on his grave: “To live at all is mir­a­cle enough.”

Recent­ly, I was delight­ed to see that Blake’s Cot­tage had been bought by the Blake Soci­ety and will soon be open to the pub­lic. That would have pleased my dad, as he often took his adult edu­ca­tion stu­dents to see the old flint cot­tage in Fel­pham – “the sweet­est spot on earth”, accord­ing to Blake.

Sad­ly some of the hous­es we pho­tographed have now been demol­ished. Asham House, Bed­ding­ham, where Vir­ginia Woolf lived dur­ing the First World War, has gone. That’s a great shame as it was a beau­ti­ful house. When we vis­it­ed, the air was filled with the sound of ragged crows call­ing to each oth­er across the bare tree tops.

The brick church of St Cuthbert’s in Hove, where the poet Andrew Young was a min­is­ter from 1920, was demol­ished while we were work­ing on the book. I took a pho­to­graph of Bernard among the ruins. As a young man, my dad had been a poet and he loved Young’s poet­ry.

They were good days, full of con­ver­sa­tions about writ­ers and walks across rolling down­land, fueled by dark Sus­sex ales – days I’ll nev­er for­get. Thanks dad.

I dare say you can still pick up a sec­ond-hand copy of our book. My pho­tos from the book (and a few extra ones) are most­ly on Flickr. You can also read the fore­word, writ­ten by anoth­er Sus­sex writer, Christo­pher Fry. I’ve uploaded a pdf file of his orig­i­nal text, typed on his 1917 typewriter, here.

If you’ve enjoyed read­ing this, you might be inter­est­ed in anoth­er piece I wrote on the links between place and writ­ing.