Louis Netter’s illustration on the cover of Coast of Teeth

WATCH OUR ONLINE POLITICS CHANNEL, PEEPS, ON YOUTUBE

THE author and illustrator of a highly praised and colourful book about Britain’s declining seaside towns spoke out this week about the urgent need for improvements, particularly in the wake of climate change.

Coast of Teeth: Travels to English Seaside Towns in an Age of Anxiety with words by Portsmouth academic Tom Sykes, and drawings by Hackney illustrator Louis Netter, has received plaudits from, among others, author Will Self and comic Arthur Smith.

In their new paperback Sykes and Netter took what they described as a “wild tour” of 21 English coastal communities including Bournemouth, Scarborough, Blackpool, Clacton, Weston-Super-Mare, Portsmouth, Southsea and Gosport. Not surprisingly they discovered that many towns had been “pummelled by poverty” and underinvestment, partly by the effects Brexit, Covid and climate crisis.

The book is said to inspire many Londoners – often put off from travelling abroad – who yearn for the kind of seaside holiday in the UK much celebrated in earlier years.

Sykes, associate professor of creative writing and global journalism at Portsmouth University, took up the issue after being fed up with plastic and sewage pollution and an extraordinary discovery – that a tramline near his Portsmouth home had been out of order since 1936.

The duo do a formidable tour of the English coastline – the 30th longest in the world – and examine what is right and wrong.

Take the Grand Hotel, Scarborough. “Traces of splendour remain in this baroque, V-shaped 1863 edifice, once the biggest hotel in Europe,” Sykes writes.

“Today, it could do with a paint job and some hostile architecture to repel seagulls nesting in the alcoves and loitering on window ledges. The screeching, like hundreds of goblins cackling at once, is intolerable.”

Sykes describes Bournemouth’s astronomical house prices and ageing population contrasting starkly with its excess of rehab clinics and substance-related deaths.

Food at one posh hotel is not wonderful. “Insipid gravy, latex turkey – or is it chicken, we have no idea – and veg boiled for so long they may have been sentenced to a Tudor execution.”

Multi-ethnic Portsmouth with its popular annual music festival is a great favourite in the book, apart from the litter and plastic pollution. Syke’s pal, Dan McCabe, is one of a rising number of beachcombers (litter pickers) who help clean the coast. At Langstone Bay, Dan picked up a radiator cap covered in cling film.

Climate change, involving extreme heat, and not forgetting heavy rain and flooding as seen recently in Spain, is already making parts of the Mediterranean almost a no-go area for Brits wanting to go on holiday in the summer.

Many believe that even if our weather doesn’t improve, Britain, with its cooler temperatures, could ultimately be the place for summer holidays. But we need to improve our seasides.

Sykes argues that the English beach holiday has been wilting since the 1970s. “Many seaside economies are now in tatters.”

Where he lives there’s sewage dumping and flooding, making parts of the Solent not safe for swimming.
“On top of that there’s damage done by plastic pollution that’s killing off wildlife and turning beauty spots into eyesores.”

It’s also no great surprise, he said, that water companies often find it cheaper to fling the sewage in the sea – and take a hit of a £90million fine – than pay for treating it.

But is quality of life also taking a hit?

In a broadside against “seaside” food, Sykes writes: “Many shoreline settlements are trapped in the culinary time-warp of the transatlantic 1950s: Milkshakes, burgers, hot dogs, pulled pork, endless cups of coffee, endless cups of tea, full English breakfasts, bacon sandwiches, teacakes and scones.”

Then there’s the military. Does Southsea on the south coast with its naval base, have an “island mentality” and at times paranoia about foreign invasion?

Sykes declares: “From Scarborough to Clacton to Boscombe, underfunding, underskilling, unemployment, and flaws in the benefits system have made life miserable for multitudes.”

As for polluting plastic, just look around Southsea beach. He did and describes washed-up plastic straws, (banned in the UK since October 2020).

On one day alone he found polythene shards of various lengths, latex gloves, a pink Frisbee and, biggest of all, an abandoned fibreglass boat.

“Microplastics are so small as to be invisible to the human eye,” Sykes says. “I wince at seagulls pecking at a bloated tangle of seaweed.”

But the book is not all negativity. Interestingly two northern seaside towns come out best for their improvements. Blackpool is heralded for preserving and updating its classic seaside town architecture and culture. It has also created a grassroots theatre involving refugees and people with addiction problems.

Jaywick and St Osyth has a system where lonely older people can commune with one another and a barter system allowing people access to toys and other items.

• Coast of Teeth: Travels to English Seaside Towns in an Age of Anxiety. By Tom Sykes with illustrations by Louis Netter, Signal Books, £14.99