All the Devils are Here by David Seabrook

The ghosts of the Kent Coast recover a lost past

David Seabrook's All the Devils are Here is one of those titles that booksellers must find so hard to display. Part social commentary, part essay and part travelogue this is a book that defies conventional genre; 'sui generis', the publishers call this wonderfully idiosyncratic style. The book was written in 2002 prior to the gentrification that the Kent coast has experienced over the last 10 years and Seabrook is drawn to the very darkest depths of Kent's underbelly, exposing the characters not usually cast in the 'Garden of England.'

The book features a number of well crafted essays concerning the faded seaside towns along the North Kent Coast from the Medway towns of Rochester and Chatham to Margate, Broadstairs and Deal. Seabrook considers the writers drawn to the coast for the huge skies and the salty air from Dickens and John Buchan to TS Eliot but also the artists on the fringes, like Carry On veteran Charles Hawtrey, drawn to the shadows behind the bright lights of the piers and theatres of Britain's original Riviera.

Reading Seabrook's bio I wonder at the extent to which his own studies into Marcel Proust have influenced his writing style. Could All the Devils are Here be Seabrook's attempt to portray the world in which he himself grew up?

At its most successful Seabrook locates the shelter where TS Eliot, convalescing in Margate, wrote his masterpiece, The Wasteland, to launch his magazine Criterion. "I look for a plaque; there isn't one. Yet Margate plays a deeper game. When I grow tired of examining this sea shelter I glance across to the building next to it and read TOILETS. It takes a few minutes for the spent penny to drop. I rub my eyes and look again: T.S. Eliot"

Secrets, spies, murder and intrigue; All the Devils are Here is a book that demands discussion. The front cover image of Margate's sea front with brutalist relic Arlington House looming over the dilapidated Dreamland amusement park goes someway to explain why the book has been republished for 2018. If ever a town represented the rebirth of the British sea side it's Margate.

With Turner Contemporary launching an exhibition exploring the significance of  The Wasteland on the visual arts there couldn't be a better time to give David Seabrook's work the discussion it deserves; the ghosts he describes in some way a recovery of a lost past.

All the Devils are Here by David Seabrook published by Granta, 173 pages.     

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