Brighton, A Very Peculiar History

What makes Brighton special?

We all love the seaside and the sense of freedom it brings, but Brighton has a reputation above all other resorts in Britain for the ‘edgy’ pleasures it offers to visitors from all over the world.

It’s not a bucket-and-spade kind of place, but a sophisticated ‘melting pot’ for a wide variety of people who relish the idea of having a good time in their own way.

In fact (and don’t you dare tell them this), sometimes it feels like a place for grown-ups who haven’t quite grown up at all.

The observant reader will already have noticed that the early chapters of this book are fairly short. That’s not just because it took a long time for a proper town to develop here (as we shall see, it first became prosperous in medieval times), but because Brighton discovered its true purpose in life only about 250 years ago.

That purpose has been to attract visitors in their droves, parting them from their cash – and sometimes from their common sense, too – in return for an endless, and colourfully varied, range of entertainments.