Coast of Teeth: Travels to English Seaside Towns in an Age of Anxiety

The English seaside has long been seductive. Recently, many seaside towns have been pummelled by poverty and underinvestment – with predictable results. Brexit, COVID and the climate crisis have heightened tensions. Writer Tom Sykes and illustrator Louis Netter take you on a wild tour of 21 English coastal communities. Their encounters are comical, sad, weird and beguiling – sometimes all at once. A post-lockdown beach party turns violent in Bournemouth. The Hampshire shores pile up with plastic waste and sewage. Trailer parks and makeshift homes resemble Global-South shanty towns. Covid disinformation is daubed on walls and benches across the Dorset coast. A pub in Scarborough celebrates Ulster para militarism. A Blackpudlian musician confesses an intimate connection to a serial killer. But there’s good news too. Combers and mudlarkers are cleaning our beaches. Portsmouthians are coming to terms with the imperial past. Art projects are drawing attention to coastal erosion and other ecological menaces. Blackpool is reinventing itself in
its own unique way.