.
.

This is a unique book: somewhere between a travelogue of forgotten English backwaters, a satirical sketch-book about a society in crisis, and a rigorous psycho-geographical account of an underprivileged landscape. It is, therefore, hard to categorise, but none the worse for that.
.
The words are by Tom Sykes and the illustrations by Louis Netter, but there’s far more to its structure than that. The two undertook a series of journeys round English seaside towns, but the written text indicates that it was very much a joint enterprise: affably ill-at-ease, hiding the notebook and the sketchpad, the two are rather like Mass-Observers from the 1930s, running the same risks of being lynched by the folk whose lives they annotate. There is a verbal coherence to the written text: ironic, allusive, at times downright hilarious. And the visual style of the drawings is coherent too: in the style of George Grosz or Otto Dix, they mix the everyday with the grotesque. Will Self is quite wrong to say “they have the Donald McGill vibe”: they are not remotely populist in their manner. What is interesting is the relationship between image and word. It is not purely illustrative. The images don’t flesh out the words. Rather, the images are in apposition to the words: an analogous world that stands beside them.
.
The geographical spread is extensive: Torquay in the west, Bournemouth in the south, Whitby in the north. As might be expected, the most detailed material is of the area the pair know best, Portsmouth and environs. If I have any criticism of the work, it is that this part is much more detailed (and more angry) than the rest. The rage of the Portsmouth and Hayling sections comes from familiarity and a sense of waste, and so it slightly overdetermines and unbalances the texture of the whole. But it’s not really a drawback.
.
What holds the book together marvellously, though, is a rigorous sense of the reasons for economic and cultural decline. It is at the geographical boundaries that the fault-lines in a society are most in evidence, and this is richly demonstrated here, with a wonderful eye for detail. The awful food! The clothes! The decay! But Coast of Teeth takes the utmost care not to condescend to the denizens of the coastal wastelands they describe. Rather, they rail at the circumstances which have cut whole areas and whole populations adrift.
.
This is a very radical book, but it is never propagandist or dull. It made me laugh aloud several times: the plight of the observers is very well drawn. It left me wanting more: more piers, more takeaways, more grubby stopovers.  Here’s to the next volume!
.
.
Sue Harper is Emeritus professor of Film History at the University of Portsmouth. She has written many essays and articles on British cinema, and her books include Picturing the Past: The Rise and Fall of the British Costume Film (British Film Institute, 1994), Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know: Women in British Cinema (Continuum, 2000), British Cinema of the 1950s: The Decline of Deference (with Vincent Porter) (Oxford University Press, 2003) and British Film Culture in the 1970s: The Boundaries of Pleasure (with Justin Smith) (Edinburgh University Press, 2012). She was given a BAFTSS Outstanding Achievement Award in 2017.

---

To discover more content exclusive to our print and digital editions, subscribe here to receive a copy of The London Magazine to your door every two months, while also enjoying full access to our extensive digital archive of essays, literary journalism, fiction and poetry.