With the nation in lockdown and many of us struggling to fill the time profitably, bookshops are reporting a significant increase in sales of longer novels and classic fiction. The book chain Waterstones has seen its online sales rise by 400 percent week on week. It has also reported a “significant uplift” in classic – and often timely – titles, including Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.
But what about Sussex reads? If you’re missing getting out and about across the county, let your imagination take you there instead. Here, with the help of three Sussex writers –Peter James, Lynne Truss, and Simon Brett – we’ve compiled our essential fiction reading list, which will take you from the mean streets of Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock to the genteel cobbled alleyways of Tilling, immortalized in EF Benson’s Mapp and Lucia novels. And once you’ve sated your appetite for fiction, we’ve also thrown in some memoirs, nature writing, and books on the visual arts. Apologies if we’ve missed out on your favorites.
CLASSIC FICTION
Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
(Vintage Classic, £8.99) chosen by Peter James
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der May 2020-Ausgabe von Sussex Life.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der May 2020-Ausgabe von Sussex Life.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
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TAKE YOUR TIME
Dean Edwards’ new cookbook features delectable recipes that you can slow cook or stick in the oven. Here’s a selection of the best
Decorative art
Not simply functional, treat your walls like an extension of your personality
ON THE FRONT FOOT
The rugby legend took the reins at Sussex County Cricket Club in 2017, rekindling his love for a sport that first won his heart on the village cricket fields of North Yorkshire
NAKED AMBITION
In the 1980s, Christine and Jennifer Binnie partied with Boy George and Marilyn and bared all as performance art collective The Neo-Naturists. Now they are working together to gain the recognition they feel they deserve
ROCKET MAN
Astronaut Tim Peake has come a long way since growing up in Westbourne and attending Chichester High School for Boys: 248 miles above Earth, to be precise. But, he says, life on the International Space Station has a lot in common with family caravanning holidays
Revolution man
Lewes’ most famous resident Thomas Paine may be the greatest propagandist who ever lived. But how did a humble customs and excise officer ignite the touchpaper for revolution in not one but two countries?
THE DIARY
17 exciting things to do this month in East and West Sussex
All in a day's work
Meet Tim Dummer, who has helped keep Midhurst’s Cowdray Estate shipshape for an impressive five decades
My favourite Sussex
Bruce Fogle is an author and a vet with a practice in London who has lived in West Sussex with his wife, the actress Julia Foster, since 1989. He recently became president of RSPCA Mount Noddy near Chichester
10 OF THE BEST Meat-free restaurants in Brighton and Hove
Brighton is often rated one of the most vegan-friendly cities in the UK. What these restaurants prove is that plant-based food doesn’t have to be puritanical – at all of these places you’ll find big flavours and a desire to push the envelope
