‘South Eastern Survey’ by Richard Wyndham
Originally published in 1940, republished in 2019 as ‘Sussex, Kent and Surrey 1939’ by Batsford. Buy the reissued edition at Hive in the UK.

Originally published as part of Batsford’s ‘The Face Of Britain Series’ in March 1940, Richard Wyndham’s ‘South Eastern Survey’ is dedicated to “THE ARM-CHAIR TRAVELLERS OF THE SECOND GREAT WAR” and, despite it’s functional sounding title, is a beautifully poignant snapshot of three English counties in the immediate prelude to WW2. For its reissue in 2019, the book was retitled ‘Sussex, Kent and Surrey 1939’, a title perhaps slightly more descriptive of the contents, but still pleasingly functional. ‘It does what it says on the cover’ might be its advertising strapline.

It is inevitable, of course, that the spectre of the coming conflict settles its shadows over proceedings, even as the infamously fabulous summer weather of 1939 might have given the illusion of all being well with the world. So there is, not exactly a sense of presentiment about how the landscape, in its widest definition, is about to be altered by coming events, but certainly an awareness that we are at a hinge point in history. It may be that, from 80 years in the future, we cannot help but colour Wyndham’s words with our knowledge of What Came Next, and it is arguably true too that every year, indeed every moment in time might be described as at least a crease in the hinges of history, but nevertheless, there is something about ‘South Eastern Survey’ that is sweetly seductive as a glimpse into the past.

There is, as Peter Ashley points out in his excellent introduction to the 2019 reissue, something of “the painter’s eye” in Wyndham’s photographs and text, “seeing things the casual observer does not.” This reminds me of something I read recently where the role of the music critic might be to “show the listener what they missed.” That may, on one level, seem insulting to “the listener” or “the casual observer” but it needn’t, for it points to the essentially subjective nature of our experiences. Each of us ‘sees’ something the other misses and it is the play between us as all that helps populate the picture. The eternal dialogue of observation allows us to sharpen our focus, even as the image tilts, shifts and turns again on its axis.

‘South Eastern Survey’ then is not the kind of cold and objective overview that its title might suggest. Nor is it the kind of over-familiar and cloyingly personal sort of travel writing we might have been subjected to in more recent years, and thank goodness for that. Rather there is something pleasingly reserved and polite about Wyndham’s informed and intelligent prose, like John Le Mesurier’s Sergeant Wilson reading Betjeman and Pevsner. Simply marvellous.

Amongst a broad collection of delights, Ashley rightly picks up on Wyndham’s description of Fairfield church on the Romney Marsh in Kent as a particular treat. Wyndham describes it as looking “like a toy dropped by a child”. Now as a Scottish boy transplanted to Devon, the South East of England is largely a foreign country to me, but I vividly remember seeing the church from bike rides on the Marshes when I visited some eight years ago, and Wyndham’s description certainly rings true. It is a landscape, and a building, with a strange allure.

Elsewhere in the book Wyndham turns that “painter’s eye” to innumerable other churches, landscapes, houses and high streets. Here is the view from the Devil’s Dyke, looking to Chanctonbury; there the road to Lewes with a white gouge into the chalk downs and a lovely 1930s open topped touring car entering from stage left. Over the page there are toffs at Glyndebourne looking much the same as they might wandering the lawns in 2022, whilst the waterfront at Ramsgate would appear (according to Google Street View at least) also to be largely unchanged. And here’s the thing that oddly enough makes ‘South Eastern Survey’ feel so timeless: Even whilst the world turns and everything changes, there is enough that stays the same to both amplify the awareness of change and to quell its disquietude.

And that’s not some kind of simple nostalgia for something we’ve never actually known. Nor is it the kind of blind/deaf/dumb suggestion that Things In The Past Were ‘Harder’ And Therefore Better that is seemingly weaponised on a daily basis by culture warriors in the media, determined only to hoodwink us into thinking that it’s actually still okay to be racist, sexist, ageist, fascist or whatever. It’s not, and I suspect that Wyndham, who was called up on active service before having a chance to quite finish his journeys in the South East, and who was “killed in 1948 by Israeli gunfire as he was taking a photograph of an Arab advance” whilst covering that particular conflict for ‘The Sunday Times’, would agree.

Instead, as Ashley notes, “what is remarkably still true is Wyndham’s thought that he firmly plants in our minds in the first paragraph of his first chapter: ‘But turn off these concrete highways down a side lane or an old main road now by-passed; as in the vortex of a hurricane, you can find complete calm.” And whilst, sure, there are conversations to be had about the nature of that calm and to whom it is actually available, for me, here, now, as it must have been for Wyndham 80 years ago, it’s enough. It’s more than enough.

NB: Peter Ashley’s introduction is certainly a fine reason for picking up a new copy of ‘Sussex, Kent and Surrey 1939’ but it’s certainly too worth sourcing a used copy of the original 1940 printing. In ‘South Eastern Survey’ you’ll find finer quality photographs printed on glossy pages and maps printed in a gorgeous phthalo green ink inside the front (Sussex and South Surrey) and back (Kent and East Sussex) covers.