Beside the Seaside

Do you remember a time when seaside summer's were always golden? When the deep, soft sand was warm between your toes and the sun glinted brilliantly from a true blue sky? What about the explosive showers and the trussed-up piles of windswept deckchairs? The gritty sandwiches clutched by shuddering goose-pimpled children? Not just the grand hotels and the sweeping esplanades, but the ubiquitous boarding houses "a stone's throw from the beach".

This book revels in all of it: the bathing beauties, the donkey rides, the glitzy funfairs and pleasure domes, the lit-up piers and the dark romantic shelters. Can't you just smell the salty tang of it?