29 August 1859: Seaside amusements and seaside decencies - ‘When gentlemen are bathing, ladies come in their own carriages, alight, and improve the occasion by means of opera glasses.’
10 September 1913: Leave seashells on the seashore.
7 August 1926: First woman to swim the English Channel.
15 August 1930: This bathing business - ‘the sands appear to be always covered with heaps of sprawling youth, very bare of leg and back, dressed in very scanty bathing costumes of startling design.’
6 July 1935: Chasing a tan in the New Bronze Age - ‘To strip and grill on a blazing, windless day is merely to provoke an ache of the head and a rawness of the back; sunbathing is a sport for masochists.’
29 May 1956: British beach resorts plagued by swarms of insects.
24 May 1964: Mods v Rockers - Britain’s summer of discontent: the Mods’ eye view of the tribal war that led to the vicious battle of Margate.
2 April 1980: Naked as nature - if not weather - intended: Brighton becomes the first major British resort to open a naturist beach on its seafront.
22 June 2009: Pier culture: history beside the seaside.
6 August 2013: UK seaside resorts in decline. Then and now - in pictures.
29 August 2013: The joy of beach huts - a beach hut is a dream of escape, a shortcut to childhood longings.
23 June 2015: I can hear the sea! How the sounds of the British coast are being mapped. Martyn Ware’s seaside soundscape: a feeling of calm in a manic world.
14 May 2016: Once more on to the beach: how Britain’s seaside towns bounced back.
