Culture of Sussex
Sometimes thought by outsiders to be some sort of rural adjunct to London, Sussex has a cultural identity as unique as any other English county.
[4] This relative isolation until recent times is due to Sussex's geography, with the sea to the south, the forest and sticky clays of the Weald to the north and coastal marshes to the east and west.
Sussex in the first half of the 20th century was a major centre for modernism, and saw many radical artists and writers move to its seaside towns and countryside.
[18] Typically conservative and moderate,[19] the architecture of Sussex also has elaborate and eccentric buildings rarely matched elsewhere in England including the Saxon Church of St Mary the Blessed Virgin, Sompting; Castle Goring, which has a front and rear of entirely different styles; and Brighton's Indo-Saracenic Royal Pavilion.
Important works from the 20th century include the International style De la Warr Pavilion,[26] and Chichester Festival Theatre and University of Sussex, both fine examples of Modernist architecture.
In the 21st century, the rebuilt Hastings Pier won the 2017 RIBA Stirling Prize,[27] with both the Weald and Downland Gridshell and Jubilee Library, Brighton[28] being finalists in earlier years.
[36] Several critically acclaimed films have been set in Sussex including The Invisible Man (1933), National Velvet (1944), Brighton Rock (1947, 2010), Genevieve (1953), The Chalk Garden (1964), Oh!
What a Lovely War (1969), Quadrophenia (1979), The Snowman (1982), When the Wind Blows (1986),[37] Wish You Were Here (1987), Children of Men (2006), My Boy Jack (2007), Down Terrace (2009) and Mr. Turner (2014).
Charles Bennett is possibly best known for The 39 Steps (1935); Harold Pinter wrote the screenplay for The Pumpkin Eater (1963) from his Worthing home,[44] for which he won a BAFTA.
[45][46][47] These seven things are: Pulborough eel, Selsey cockle, Chichester lobster, Rye herring, Arundel mullet, Amberley trout and Bourne wheatear.
Speciality breads include Lady Arundel's manchet, the recipe for which was first published in the 17th century whilst the town of Horsham has a continuing history of baking gingerbread.
[67] As a former kingdom, Sussex had a strong identity from this period, which was enhanced by its framework of a long coastline, the South Downs and the wooded Weald to its north.
In Stella Gibbons's novel Cold Comfort Farm, Flora Poste, the central character muses that "Sussex, when all said and done, is not quite like other counties".
The legendary Bevis of Hampton is in Sussex folklore a giant often associated with Arundel, where he was supposed to live and would sometimes stride across the sea to the Isle of Wight.
[88] Co-written by Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset, the play Gorboduc from 1561 is one of the earliest documented works of literature from a Sussex writer.
[91] The poet, writer and Member of Parliament Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) spent most of his life in Sussex, growing up in Slindon and returning to the county to live at Shipley.
[93] One of Victorian England's most famous poets Alfred Tennyson (1809–92) spent his summers, away from the holiday crowds of the Isle of Wight, at Aldworth House, Blackdown, which he built in 1869.
[4] Sussex also played a major part in the folk music revival of the 1960s and 1970s with various musicians including George 'Pop' Maynard, Scan Tester, Tony Wales and the sisters Dolly and Shirley Collins.
[2] In popular music, Sussex has produced artists including Leo Sayer, The Cure, The Levellers, Brett Anderson, Keane, The Kooks, STOMP, The Feeling, Rizzle Kicks, Conor Maynard, Tom Odell, Passenger, Royal Blood, Rag'n'Bone Man, Celeste and Architects.
In the 1970s, Sussex was home to Phun City,[97] the UK's first large-scale free music festival and hosted the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest which propelled ABBA to worldwide fame.
In the 20th century, Frederick Soddy won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on radioactive substances, and his investigations into the origin and nature of isotopes.
[106] David Mumford is a mathematician known for distinguished work in algebraic geometry and for research into vision and pattern theory, including the Mumford-Shah Functional.
The founding father of Keynesian economics, he is widely considered to be one of the founders of modern macroeconomics and the most influential economist of the 20th century.
In 1953 the bone fragments were exposed as a forgery, consisting of the lower jawbone of an orangutan deliberately combined with the skull of a fully developed modern human.
These appear to include the heads of two red deer, an ox and a fish[122] and are significant as few pieces of representational art survive from the British Neolithic period.
William Burrell of Knepp Castle commissioned Swiss-born watercolourist Samuel Hieronymus Grimm to tour Sussex, producing 900 watercolours of the county's buildings.
[132] Charles Lennox, 3rd Duke of Richmond, whose seat was at Goodwood House, commissioned landscape artist George Smith of Chichester to produce various works.
[134] In the 19th century landscape watercolourist Copley Fielding lived in Sussex and illustrator Aubrey Beardsley and painter and sculptor Eric Gill were born in Brighton.
[138] In the early 20th century Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, both members of the Bloomsbury Group, lived and worked at Charleston Farmhouse near Firle.
[140] At West Dean, Edward James was patron to artists including Salvador Dalí and René Magritte[140][141] while at Farley Farm House near Chiddingly the home of Roland Penrose and Lee Miller was frequented by artists such as Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, Henry Moore, Eileen Agar, Jean Dubuffet, Dorothea Tanning and Max Ernst.
