Bombs, Ravilious, Eastbourne and The Chalky Sea

That was in September 1940, two months after the opening of my novel, The Chalky Sea, with the first bombing of Eastbourne in July 1940. On Tuesday September 10th a proclamation was posted in the town to recommend that all those without essential duties evacuate the town. Most people left on the Wednesday and Eastbourne was soon reduced to a population of about thirteen thousand people. On the following Friday  - the ominous Friday the Thirteenth – a terrible weekend of devastation took place, turning large areas of the town to heaps of rubble. Again this features in The Chalky Sea. When Ravilious passed through on his way to Newhaven, it was probably soon after this terrible assault on the town.

The bombing didn't stop in 1940. Eastbourne continued to be pummelled until the last conventional bomb fell in March 1944 - with further attacks by V1 flying bombs, the infamous Doodlebugs, until August of that year. Eric Ravilious didn't survive the war. His war artist duties took him to Iceland in September 1942, to RAF Kaldadarnes. On the day he arrived he went up on a mission with RAF Coastal Command to search for a missing Lockheed Hudson, but the plane he flew in never returned. My own father was stationed at the same base in Iceland where he too served with RAF Coastal Command, doing weather reconnaissance. The exhibition is definitely worth a visit. As well as a comprehensive display of Ravilious's own work - war paintings, woodcuts, downland paintings, illustrations etc, it features a vast collection of his friends' work including Paul and John Nash, Edward Bawden, Enid Marx, Helen Binyon, Barnett Friedman and more. I was drooling over some of the beautiful book covers. But wake up Towner. If you can take photos without flash in the RijksMuseum, the National Gallery and the Tate, why not here? It would enable visitors to spread the word. I wouldn't mind if they did a good job themselves on social media but it's pitiful! At a time when they are facing massive cuts in their funding they need all the help they can get.

ADDENDUM - The Towner Art Gallery have kindly given me access to some images from the exhibition and explained that their no photography rule was a result of some of the 82 lenders to the exhibition having strict no photo policies. Accordingly I have added a couple of images with credits.