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All the Devils Are Here
In this study of East Kent, David Seabrook combines his observations of the towns’ cultural and political landscapes with their literary associations. In Margate and Westgate, Seabrook detects the desperate merriment of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land; in Rochester and Chatham, he senses the ghosts of Dickens and the drug fantasies of Thomas De Quincey; and in Broadstairs, he uncovers a weird network involving Lord Curzon, a Nazi con man, and Audrey Hepburn’s father.
176 pages, Paperback
First published March 7, 2002
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1006 people want to read
About the author
David Seabrook
2 books10 followersDavid Seabrook studied English at the University of Kent (Canterbury). Following his BA, he continued his studies at UKC and completed his MA with a dissertation on French author Marcel Proust. Following his studies, Seabrook relocated to Greece, where he worked as a teacher. He returned to the UK in order to pursue his literary ambitions.
David Seabrook's "All The Devils Are Here" was his first published book. It examines the seamy side of the county Kent (United Kingdom) through artistic, historic and literary connections. The book focuses on T.S. Eliot's connections to Margate, John Buchan (Broadstairs), Richard Dadds (Medway) and Charles Hawtrey, mostly associated with the Carry On series, in Deal. Among literary critics the book provoked discussion about which category of literature it fitted in. Some resented the book, as it exposed the darker sides of the county.
"Jack of Jumps", Seabrook's second book, was published in 2006. It looks at the unsolved murders of eight prostitutes in West London and goes as far as pointing the finger for the killings at an unnamed former policeman.
Aged 48 and working on his third project, David Seabrook died in Canterbury (Kent) in January 2009. He was found dead in his home.
David Seabrook's "All The Devils Are Here" was his first published book. It examines the seamy side of the county Kent (United Kingdom) through artistic, historic and literary connections. The book focuses on T.S. Eliot's connections to Margate, John Buchan (Broadstairs), Richard Dadds (Medway) and Charles Hawtrey, mostly associated with the Carry On series, in Deal. Among literary critics the book provoked discussion about which category of literature it fitted in. Some resented the book, as it exposed the darker sides of the county.
"Jack of Jumps", Seabrook's second book, was published in 2006. It looks at the unsolved murders of eight prostitutes in West London and goes as far as pointing the finger for the killings at an unnamed former policeman.
Aged 48 and working on his third project, David Seabrook died in Canterbury (Kent) in January 2009. He was found dead in his home.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 88 reviews
February 4, 2018
All the Devils Are Here is a short volume compiling three of David Seabrook's essays about the Kent coast. Reissuing the book 16 years after its original publication, and nine years after Seabrook's death, seems to have deepened its mysteries, made it even more enigmatic. The essays (plus a prelude) are rambling psychogeographical excursions that rarely attack a topic directly, preferring to linger in the margins. Seabrook is concerned with literature, crime and the underbelly of celebrity.
The second essay, 'In Town Tonight', is a small, strange masterpiece. It starts off with a murder (unsolved?) and moves briefly on to Broadstairs entertainer 'Uncle Mack' before getting to the real meat of the story: The Thirty-Nine Steps (film), Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists, Audrey Hepburn's parents, Billy Bunter creator Frank Richards, The Thirty-Nine Steps (book), William 'Lord Haw-Haw' Joyce – fact and fiction spinning into each other, all extrapolated from a cliffside glimpse of a villa named Naldera. Sometimes you can love a book, but as soon as you put it aside, the world inside it disappears. Other times you carry it around with you, singing in every step you take all day long, and that's how it was with this essay.
The narratives here are the type that don't reveal their secrets easily. The subject will suddenly switch and you'll have to read a few pages before you find out who or what you're reading about. At several points I was unsure whether Seabrook had actually slipped into fiction, especially when he started writing about himself. (Or someone who seems to be himself. Is this first-person narrator, wandering around seaside towns and interviewing alarmingly forthcoming strangers, meant to be the author? This is one of the mysteries of the book, likely to fascinate some and frustrate others.)
I think it's pretty important not to approach this as one would an ordinary essay collection, memoir, or work of non-fiction. Viewed through any of those prisms, it's disappointing in almost every way – All the Devils Are Here neither fully elucidates its subjects nor reveals much about its author. Yet I found so much to love about the way it's written, the opaqueness of it, Seabrook's restless way of tackling a story.
Oh, and I can't finish the review without mentioning that this Granta Editions reissue may have the most beautiful cover I have ever seen. The colours, the backlit-neon glow of the text, the arrow, the urban seaside panorama – I love everything about it. Bravo to designer Luke Bird.
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The second essay, 'In Town Tonight', is a small, strange masterpiece. It starts off with a murder (unsolved?) and moves briefly on to Broadstairs entertainer 'Uncle Mack' before getting to the real meat of the story: The Thirty-Nine Steps (film), Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists, Audrey Hepburn's parents, Billy Bunter creator Frank Richards, The Thirty-Nine Steps (book), William 'Lord Haw-Haw' Joyce – fact and fiction spinning into each other, all extrapolated from a cliffside glimpse of a villa named Naldera. Sometimes you can love a book, but as soon as you put it aside, the world inside it disappears. Other times you carry it around with you, singing in every step you take all day long, and that's how it was with this essay.
The narratives here are the type that don't reveal their secrets easily. The subject will suddenly switch and you'll have to read a few pages before you find out who or what you're reading about. At several points I was unsure whether Seabrook had actually slipped into fiction, especially when he started writing about himself. (Or someone who seems to be himself. Is this first-person narrator, wandering around seaside towns and interviewing alarmingly forthcoming strangers, meant to be the author? This is one of the mysteries of the book, likely to fascinate some and frustrate others.)
I think it's pretty important not to approach this as one would an ordinary essay collection, memoir, or work of non-fiction. Viewed through any of those prisms, it's disappointing in almost every way – All the Devils Are Here neither fully elucidates its subjects nor reveals much about its author. Yet I found so much to love about the way it's written, the opaqueness of it, Seabrook's restless way of tackling a story.
Oh, and I can't finish the review without mentioning that this Granta Editions reissue may have the most beautiful cover I have ever seen. The colours, the backlit-neon glow of the text, the arrow, the urban seaside panorama – I love everything about it. Bravo to designer Luke Bird.
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November 23, 2023
All the Devils Are Here by David Seabrook was published in 2002 by Granta. I heard about it on the marvellous Backlisted Podcast, who discussed it on their 17 April 2016 episode.
All the Devils Are Here is about Kent. Kent past and present, but mainly past. It has an acute sense of place, and I enjoyed David Seabrook's constant linking of disparate places, events and other information, often relayed via a feverish inner monologue.
In Rochester, Seabrook finds a heritage town trapped in its own history where he explores the bizarre life of Victorian painter Richard Dadd, and his possible connection to Dickens' The Mystery of Edwin Drood. In Broadstairs, he connects Lord Curzon, John Buchan, Lord Haw-Haw, Oswald Mosley, and a Nazi con-man, who happens to be Audrey Hepburn's father. Finally to Deal, and the last days of Charles Hawtrey via Robin Maugham, the true story of 'The Servant', Freddie Mills, the Jack The Stripper murders, and Gordon, an ageing homosexual with a good memory and intriguing tales.
David Seabrook inserts himself into the narrative, never really explaining himself or his agenda, but his part adds to a growing sense of unease. David Seabrook both loves Kent and is freaked out by what he uncovers, or what he imagines he uncovers. His perceptions and connections often appear to be a reflection of his own tortured psyche.
Overall David Seabrook's trawl round the coast of Kent results in a very unusual and disturbing memoir, but one I generally found absorbing and compelling. It starts slow but gradually gains momentum, getting better and better. It's creepy and atmospheric, and a book I intend to reread.
David Seabrook died on 18 January 2009.
4/5
All the Devils Are Here is about Kent. Kent past and present, but mainly past. It has an acute sense of place, and I enjoyed David Seabrook's constant linking of disparate places, events and other information, often relayed via a feverish inner monologue.
In Rochester, Seabrook finds a heritage town trapped in its own history where he explores the bizarre life of Victorian painter Richard Dadd, and his possible connection to Dickens' The Mystery of Edwin Drood. In Broadstairs, he connects Lord Curzon, John Buchan, Lord Haw-Haw, Oswald Mosley, and a Nazi con-man, who happens to be Audrey Hepburn's father. Finally to Deal, and the last days of Charles Hawtrey via Robin Maugham, the true story of 'The Servant', Freddie Mills, the Jack The Stripper murders, and Gordon, an ageing homosexual with a good memory and intriguing tales.
David Seabrook inserts himself into the narrative, never really explaining himself or his agenda, but his part adds to a growing sense of unease. David Seabrook both loves Kent and is freaked out by what he uncovers, or what he imagines he uncovers. His perceptions and connections often appear to be a reflection of his own tortured psyche.
Overall David Seabrook's trawl round the coast of Kent results in a very unusual and disturbing memoir, but one I generally found absorbing and compelling. It starts slow but gradually gains momentum, getting better and better. It's creepy and atmospheric, and a book I intend to reread.
David Seabrook died on 18 January 2009.
4/5
April 1, 2021
4.5 rounded up
Brilliant stuff - David Seabrook writes about the Kent coast and the history of its memorable inhabitants in the three extended essays which comprise All the Devils Are Here. The perfect blend of psychogeography (new favourite genre), history and true crime, written in a truly distinctive and adept way.
Brilliant stuff - David Seabrook writes about the Kent coast and the history of its memorable inhabitants in the three extended essays which comprise All the Devils Are Here. The perfect blend of psychogeography (new favourite genre), history and true crime, written in a truly distinctive and adept way.
January 18, 2018
Living in England my whole adult life has given me a feel for some of the characteristic quirks of Englishness. It’s not a mistake that some national identities get associated with certain stereotypes and emotional repression is definitely a badge commonly worn in this great nation. Reading this reissue of David Seabrook’s “All The Devils Are Here” it felt to me like this book exemplifies this condition better than any book I can recall - except for maybe the recent novel “First Love” where it felt Gwendoline Riley was determined to show the reader every stain in her dirty laundry without letting us know how she really felt about this filthy heap. Seabrook’s book treads the line somewhere between memoir and journalism as it records his wanderings through several seaside towns in Kent and discloses some of the seedier stories connected with this landscape. He flits between many subjects such as T.S. Eliot’s nervous breakdown, an institutionalized artist who committed patricide and the furtive entanglements of several gay writers, actors and athletes. However, he discloses virtually no detail about his reasons for treading so desolately through these haunted streets despite hints of being in a state of personal crisis. As a raconteur of scarcely-remembered odd personalities and tragic events, Seabrook is often compelling and makes intriguing connections. But, as a chronicler of the dynamics of his own heart, he’s an utter failure.
Read my full review of All The Devils Are Here by David Seabrook on LonesomeReader
Read my full review of All The Devils Are Here by David Seabrook on LonesomeReader
June 8, 2022
Seaside towns are usually depicted as places where people go and have fun. A place which is tacky but offers a lot of entertainment and tons of junk food. I wouldn’t call it a paradise but there are definitely high enjoyment levels.
Not for David Seabrook.
In these three essays there’s murder, male prostitution, Maltese rent boys, movie stars gone to seed, trigger happy authors and a father/son double killing. A mouthful of cotton candy, this is not.
What separates this small collection with other essays is because there is a huge Sebaldian influence running these pieces. Seabrook manages to link Charles Dicks with a filial murder. The staircase of an old mansion with the author John Buchan and fascist youth groups. The rather dismal fate of a Carry On actor, which involves the characters in the cult film The Servant. Everything is linked. Seabrook moves from point A to B then C, D and back to A again, thus creating interesting parallels between topics. In the process the reader gets a loose autobiography of Seabrook’s investigations. Like Sebald there are also pictures which give the explanations gravitas.
All the Devils are Here is a dark piece of work and yet it is an enlightening one. I’ve always beleived that the world is relative and authors such as Sebald , Seabrook and Labatut drive this point well.
Not for David Seabrook.
In these three essays there’s murder, male prostitution, Maltese rent boys, movie stars gone to seed, trigger happy authors and a father/son double killing. A mouthful of cotton candy, this is not.
What separates this small collection with other essays is because there is a huge Sebaldian influence running these pieces. Seabrook manages to link Charles Dicks with a filial murder. The staircase of an old mansion with the author John Buchan and fascist youth groups. The rather dismal fate of a Carry On actor, which involves the characters in the cult film The Servant. Everything is linked. Seabrook moves from point A to B then C, D and back to A again, thus creating interesting parallels between topics. In the process the reader gets a loose autobiography of Seabrook’s investigations. Like Sebald there are also pictures which give the explanations gravitas.
All the Devils are Here is a dark piece of work and yet it is an enlightening one. I’ve always beleived that the world is relative and authors such as Sebald , Seabrook and Labatut drive this point well.
January 19, 2018
For the uninitiated, the towns of Margate, Rochester, Chatham, Northfall, Broadstairs and Deal, Seabrook on the north Kent coast seem relatively normal. People go to work, fall in love, fall out, go to the pubs and live life as you'd expect. But underneath this veneer is an unexpected world. It is full of dark secrets, tantalising glimpses of literary and artistic roots, hotbeds of pre-World War 2 fascist supporters and a raft of unsolved murders.
The literary threads that entwine the start of this book are from the authors John Buchan, Robin Maugham, TS Eliot and Dickens, and the fantastical paintings of the artist and murderer Richard Dadd. He contemplates the reasons why these men produced the art that they did as well as speculation over the way that the county wheedled its way into their work. Dickens unfinished book, The Mystery of Edwin Drood was set in a thinly disguised Rochester as Kent and Dickens are inseparable and he inhabits the landscape like a ghost from the past.
Broadstairs had its own secrets to tell though. An impressive house perched on top of the clifftop was once the home of Arthur Tester. The son of a diplomat and a German mother, he became a big supporter of the British Union of Fascists and was a spy and a channel for money coming over from Germany. He slipped away to the continent just before the start of World War II after the authorities were beginning to investigate his activities. The final chapter takes us to Deal; there Seabrook is in the sitting room of Gordon Meadows and is starting to hear the stories of the underground gay scene and the details of a horrific series of murders by someone called Jack the Stripper.
On Margate Sands.
I can connect
Nothing with nothing.
The broken fingernails of dirty hands.
My people humble people who expect
Nothing.
There is very little of the of the suppressed anger and barely hidden rage that permeates the towns of this coastline, towns that have suffered from decades of neglect and no investment, rather this is a trip back into the past of these towns and a re-telling of events that people have tried to forget. The chapter I liked the most was the final one even though it was the most morbid, however, this is possibly one of the strangest books I have read in a while. The bleakness of the subjects along with Seabrook's writing makes this feel desperate and disturbing, surreal and obsessive; it is strange as it is compelling. It is a book that when you have finished, you'll set aside and it will make you wonder just what you have read. You will either love it, or hate it. Probably both. But read it anyway.
The literary threads that entwine the start of this book are from the authors John Buchan, Robin Maugham, TS Eliot and Dickens, and the fantastical paintings of the artist and murderer Richard Dadd. He contemplates the reasons why these men produced the art that they did as well as speculation over the way that the county wheedled its way into their work. Dickens unfinished book, The Mystery of Edwin Drood was set in a thinly disguised Rochester as Kent and Dickens are inseparable and he inhabits the landscape like a ghost from the past.
Broadstairs had its own secrets to tell though. An impressive house perched on top of the clifftop was once the home of Arthur Tester. The son of a diplomat and a German mother, he became a big supporter of the British Union of Fascists and was a spy and a channel for money coming over from Germany. He slipped away to the continent just before the start of World War II after the authorities were beginning to investigate his activities. The final chapter takes us to Deal; there Seabrook is in the sitting room of Gordon Meadows and is starting to hear the stories of the underground gay scene and the details of a horrific series of murders by someone called Jack the Stripper.
On Margate Sands.
I can connect
Nothing with nothing.
The broken fingernails of dirty hands.
My people humble people who expect
Nothing.
There is very little of the of the suppressed anger and barely hidden rage that permeates the towns of this coastline, towns that have suffered from decades of neglect and no investment, rather this is a trip back into the past of these towns and a re-telling of events that people have tried to forget. The chapter I liked the most was the final one even though it was the most morbid, however, this is possibly one of the strangest books I have read in a while. The bleakness of the subjects along with Seabrook's writing makes this feel desperate and disturbing, surreal and obsessive; it is strange as it is compelling. It is a book that when you have finished, you'll set aside and it will make you wonder just what you have read. You will either love it, or hate it. Probably both. But read it anyway.
June 26, 2023
Seabrook is an odd narrator in this true crime/literary book, jumping out of the page, intertwining his own life* with the murderers, paedophiles and fascists he writes about. You could say Sebaldian, but his tone is completely the opposite of Sebald, sometimes aggressive, often sarcastic or vile (eg inappropriate dismissive humour about the prostitutes murdered during the 'Jack the Stripper' case in the 60s). However there is much fascinating - and well written - stuff here about the bad and the ugly and their connection to Kent. Richard Dadd the Victorian painter of fairies killed his father near Rochester (I half knew this, but this sent me to the net in search of more), the fascist leader Oswald Mosely lived in a villa in Broadstairs, later let to his aide de camp Arthur Tester and visited by William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw). Various crooks and sexual deviants pop up, add this to writers like Dickens, T S Eliot, Robin Maugham, John Buchan (the 39 Steps are here) and film and TV stars like Charles Hawtrey (of Carry On fame), Frankie Miller (a boxer who committed suicide**), Peter Arne (the father in Chitty Bang Bang, murdered by a gay pick up) and it's an unputdownable mix.
*often begs more questions; a sample: 'It's six years since I last came out here. Six years, this summer, not long after my fiancée's funeral (I wasn't invited).'
** or did he?
*often begs more questions; a sample: 'It's six years since I last came out here. Six years, this summer, not long after my fiancée's funeral (I wasn't invited).'
** or did he?
March 24, 2018
What do TS Eliot, Charles Dickens, William Joyce, Charles Hawtrie and Audrey Hepburn’s father have in common? Answer – they were all deeply troubled characters who spent significant, for the most part unhappy periods of their lives in coastal Kent.
It is fair to say that David Seabrook does not paint Kent in a flattering light, but neither is this an outright hatchet job. There is a lot more going on here than the humourous travel observations of a Bill Bryson or Paul Theroux. Yes, Rochester comes across as a pretty hideous place, but it is a hideousness that stimulated TS Eliot (so Seabrook argues) to write one of the great poems of the English language. This makes it much more culturally interesting than any number of outwardly more pleasant places around the country.
Parts of the book are a little too heavily stylized for my taste – edging into Iain Sinclair and David Peace territory (I acknowledge that many would consider that a compliment). However, Seabrook pre-dates both those writers, and they would presumably cite him as a major influence. Seabrook also comes across as somebody who had significant demons of his own, and the fractured, nightmarish style of the book feels very much authentic rather than affected.
It is fair to say that David Seabrook does not paint Kent in a flattering light, but neither is this an outright hatchet job. There is a lot more going on here than the humourous travel observations of a Bill Bryson or Paul Theroux. Yes, Rochester comes across as a pretty hideous place, but it is a hideousness that stimulated TS Eliot (so Seabrook argues) to write one of the great poems of the English language. This makes it much more culturally interesting than any number of outwardly more pleasant places around the country.
Parts of the book are a little too heavily stylized for my taste – edging into Iain Sinclair and David Peace territory (I acknowledge that many would consider that a compliment). However, Seabrook pre-dates both those writers, and they would presumably cite him as a major influence. Seabrook also comes across as somebody who had significant demons of his own, and the fractured, nightmarish style of the book feels very much authentic rather than affected.
November 12, 2020
This is a compulsive and thoroughly enjoyable little book, difficult to categorise, but easy to read. It is a kind of travelogue, along the north Kent coast, but is more about some of the strange and fascinating characters that have lived (and died) there over the years. Murder and suicide figure largely, as do gossip, the arts, and a certain amount of alcohol. Stories involve the likes of Dickens, Charles Hawtrey and Robin Maugham. It is especially enjoyable to anyone who knows the places the author stops off in (Margate, Rochester, Chatham and Deal among others, none of them particularly salubrious) - but even if you don't the descriptions are enough to give you a clear picture of where you are. The title says it all.
August 26, 2024
This is the type of book that you go into with little expectation, but within pages you've started plunging down one crazy rabbit hole to the next.
The loose theme of the book is the Kentish coastline and some of its more auspicious inhabitants. We go from Richard Dadd to Charles Hawtrey to T S Eliot but finding out facts and stories that are bizarre and outré. Seabrook weaves a tangled web for us to lurch through and we wonder at the next strange uncovering.
I loved the random aspect of this book and found it highly interesting and entertaining.
I was shocked to read that Seabrook died at aged 48, found dead in his flat in Canterbury. According to Wikipedia (I know I know!) there is speculation he may have been murdered!! Curiouser and curiouser.
The loose theme of the book is the Kentish coastline and some of its more auspicious inhabitants. We go from Richard Dadd to Charles Hawtrey to T S Eliot but finding out facts and stories that are bizarre and outré. Seabrook weaves a tangled web for us to lurch through and we wonder at the next strange uncovering.
I loved the random aspect of this book and found it highly interesting and entertaining.
I was shocked to read that Seabrook died at aged 48, found dead in his flat in Canterbury. According to Wikipedia (I know I know!) there is speculation he may have been murdered!! Curiouser and curiouser.
October 22, 2025
Gloriously gossipy and deeply strange, this is a psychogeographical ramble around the towns of Kent, centring around dark and troubling stories which the author digs into and to a certain extent relives as he moves from place to place. There is no central message, no linear progression, just a collection of strange and unsettling stories which you have absolutely no idea about in terms of conclusion. I loved this.
February 25, 2025
I appreciated this as outsider art. It's compelling and fascinating and seems to actively resist having a central point, which I both admired and found frustrating. But there is much it communicates through its obliqueness, mostly about Seabrook's own state of mind. I'll probably rate it higher if/when I read it again.
November 23, 2020
Reading this is like getting into a taxi for a short journey home, with a chatty driver who is a fount of interesting random information, but after a bit you realise that while you were listening to him holding forth you now have no idea where you are, and he has started ranting on about some pretty weird stuff about the local area, Nazis and Dickens and Carry On films, and it’s late and it’s dark and you start to wonder whether you will see home again because you seem to have been abducted by a deranged local history obsessive, who also knows happens to know every detail of every murder in Kent ever and wants to tell you about all of them, and you are starting to feel really scared about where this is going to end. And then he just suddenly pulls over, shoves you out, and speeds off into the night.
Ostensibly a hybrid psychogeography / true crime scrapbook / inglorious history of coastal Kent in three parts, documenting the seamy world of end-of-the-road Broadstairs, Margate and Deal. A few local A-listers - Charles Dickens, T S Eliot, Oswald Mosley, Charles Hawtrey - are accompanied by a fine supporting cast of murderers, frauds and showbiz has-beens, and an impressive crowd of oiks, cranks, prostitutes, con-men, bent coppers, gossipy old queens, traitors and drunks. Seabrook is fascinated by the clandestine, the damaged, the treacherous, the tawdry, the repressed, the sham. And Kent’s dead-end seaside towns supply him with a wealth of material.
Somehow this slim volume is far greater than the sum of its parts. Past, present, history, myth, fiction and conjecture merge, disorientatingly. And your growing sense of unease at the increasingly dark subject matter is heightened by the increasingly questionable author/narrator. Just who is he*, and why is he telling me all this stuff? He writes as a sleaze-hungry tabloid reporter, then literary detective, cultural critic, art historian, flaneur, WW2 nerd, and wistful memoirist. ‘The Wasteland’ meets the ‘News of the World’.
But at the end he’s just some bloke sitting alone in a pub, wondering if he can pull.
Make of that what you will.
(*And actually that really is a whole other story…)
Ostensibly a hybrid psychogeography / true crime scrapbook / inglorious history of coastal Kent in three parts, documenting the seamy world of end-of-the-road Broadstairs, Margate and Deal. A few local A-listers - Charles Dickens, T S Eliot, Oswald Mosley, Charles Hawtrey - are accompanied by a fine supporting cast of murderers, frauds and showbiz has-beens, and an impressive crowd of oiks, cranks, prostitutes, con-men, bent coppers, gossipy old queens, traitors and drunks. Seabrook is fascinated by the clandestine, the damaged, the treacherous, the tawdry, the repressed, the sham. And Kent’s dead-end seaside towns supply him with a wealth of material.
Somehow this slim volume is far greater than the sum of its parts. Past, present, history, myth, fiction and conjecture merge, disorientatingly. And your growing sense of unease at the increasingly dark subject matter is heightened by the increasingly questionable author/narrator. Just who is he*, and why is he telling me all this stuff? He writes as a sleaze-hungry tabloid reporter, then literary detective, cultural critic, art historian, flaneur, WW2 nerd, and wistful memoirist. ‘The Wasteland’ meets the ‘News of the World’.
But at the end he’s just some bloke sitting alone in a pub, wondering if he can pull.
Make of that what you will.
(*And actually that really is a whole other story…)
October 19, 2012
A wondrous slice of pyscho-geography from a much-missed author.
Kent is the great in-between county of England. It's got snooty commuter towns, SE London overspills, shifting coastlines and pre-CE monuments. Seabrook covers it all - the horrors of Medway, the blues of the Dartford Delta, the liminal space that is the Isle of Thanet - with Dickens, Wilkie Collins and the frankly terrifying Charles Hawtry by his side.
Original, wise and well-written.
NB - quite a few of the comments on GoodReads are about a US book with the same name which, I guess, is about mortgage frauds. As TS Eliot would have said after his sojourn in Margate - facking sort it out!
Kent is the great in-between county of England. It's got snooty commuter towns, SE London overspills, shifting coastlines and pre-CE monuments. Seabrook covers it all - the horrors of Medway, the blues of the Dartford Delta, the liminal space that is the Isle of Thanet - with Dickens, Wilkie Collins and the frankly terrifying Charles Hawtry by his side.
Original, wise and well-written.
NB - quite a few of the comments on GoodReads are about a US book with the same name which, I guess, is about mortgage frauds. As TS Eliot would have said after his sojourn in Margate - facking sort it out!
January 29, 2017
All the Devils Are Here, by David Seabrook, is a very strange, wholly enthralling, account of Kent's seaside towns, with particular focus on the seedy and unsettling literary and celebrity history. It is murders and fascists, gone to seed famous people, filtered through a strangely evocative gay subtext. Seabrook writes with great skill, often needling his reader with strange asides, where the prose drops tantalising hints of something just outside of the history and biography. I read this because of the podcast by Backlisted. Easily the finest podcast about literature (or anything for that matter), whose recommendations are almost foolproof, their taste impeccable.
August 26, 2022
First of all I have to say, I love the cover to this book, the paperback is so nicely presented, and that’s really the only positive thing I can offer about it. The truth is that so many writers try to do this sort of thing, and there are just so many out there who do it so much better and so much more consistently.
At no point does this find a rhythm or hit its stride, there's always another clunky phrase or poor choice of words clogging the narrative flow, getting in the way of what you feel could be such a better book. This was a tedious and dull collection of rag tag essays which led down one dead end after another. It looked and sounded so promising, but this was a real disappointment.
At no point does this find a rhythm or hit its stride, there's always another clunky phrase or poor choice of words clogging the narrative flow, getting in the way of what you feel could be such a better book. This was a tedious and dull collection of rag tag essays which led down one dead end after another. It looked and sounded so promising, but this was a real disappointment.
February 7, 2017
A unique look at one of England's most remarkable counties.
The late David Seabrook explores Kent from its seamier edges. This is not the Kent of oast house-themed picture postcards. There is no cricket played on monied village greens and horses ridden in summer by flaxen-haired girls are not to be seen.
Instead the focus is on the 'compost heaps' of more vivid imagination to be found mainly on the 'Garden of England's' shores. For most writers, the shores of Kent and its down at heel coastal towns would provide more material than the inhabitants of nice houses up the drive ways of its interior. So it is that Seabrook focuses on four writers who drew on Kent for inspiration. Charles Dickens drew on the contrasting fortunes of the inhabitants of the Medway Towns for a number of his novels; Great Expectations among them. Magwitch escapes from a prison hulk on the Medway before he finds Pip. Miss. Havisham is to be found in the more sedate part of Rochester. Seabrook is drawn to Dickens' alleged obsession with a grissly murder outside the Medway Towns. Of contemporary Medway, he is sometimes damning of both place and inhabitants. He notes the microclimate of Chatham, where Dickensian spectres cohabit with youthful prostitutes who ‘pound locked cars like gibbons at Longleat’.
TS Eliot wrote "the Wasteland" in Margate and Seabrook struggles to find traces of Eliot. Seabrook describes his own train journeys into the melancholy world of these faded seaside resorts. Writing in 2002, he predates recent 'gentrification' trends on the Isle of Thanet although the presence of asylum seekers in cheap seaside lodgings remains a constant. Like much of the Kent coast, Thanet has an underlying bleakness but also a depth and richness of history and experience that cleaner, happier places will never know. This is the land (and sky) that inspired artists from Turner to Van Gogh to Tracey Emin.
Robin Maughan, author of The Servant, also took inspiration in Kent and John Buchan's Thirty Nine steps allegedly drew on Broadstairs. In Broadstairs, Seabrook explores a network of Nazi sympathisers and conmen active in the 1930s. There is also reference to another child of the Kentish shore and of a British Fascist with Kent connections, Audrey Hepburn who breakfasted in Folkestone years before she did at Tiffany's.
The offbeat vibe of seaside towns that have known better days is a magnet for the eccentric,the lost and the recovering. Charles Hawtrey lived out his days after "Carry On" disgrace in Deal. Seabrook notes Hawtrey being banned from every pub in that small town before alcohol and cigarettes eventually did their worst. Seabrook recalls that at his death, this much loved onscreen actor and clown could only draw nine living souls to his funeral at Mortlake crematorium.
Seabrook was himself recovering, having lost a fiancee to cancer. This book is neither conventional nor particularly easy to read. For those familiar with Kent it is well worth the effort. For those unfamiliar with Kent but interested in the land between London and France it may also be illuminating for it shows, what those who live in Kent already know, that all the devils are here.
Seabrook is rare in his ability to capture a sense of place but this may not initially be apparent. The accounts of Kent shoreline settlements start with almost blurred perception as if through a Medway river fog. Over time, the grim but fascinating reality of Kent past and present becomes clear. Yet, this is also a book about a creative county where people make the best of and overcome a bad lot. There is hidden deprivation in Kent that few metropolitans either expect or recognise. Seabrook revels in this and the people and stories it has created. Seabrook was a man of unsanitised Kent and much in this book will be recognised and revealed to those who know that side of the county.
Seabrook himself died prematurely at 49, found alone in his Canterbury flat in 2009. A few allegations of foul play were made, largely on the basis of his second book, "Jack of Jumps" which explored aspects of the criminal underworld. These allegations seem without real foundation but Kent surely lost a talented son far too soon.
The late David Seabrook explores Kent from its seamier edges. This is not the Kent of oast house-themed picture postcards. There is no cricket played on monied village greens and horses ridden in summer by flaxen-haired girls are not to be seen.
Instead the focus is on the 'compost heaps' of more vivid imagination to be found mainly on the 'Garden of England's' shores. For most writers, the shores of Kent and its down at heel coastal towns would provide more material than the inhabitants of nice houses up the drive ways of its interior. So it is that Seabrook focuses on four writers who drew on Kent for inspiration. Charles Dickens drew on the contrasting fortunes of the inhabitants of the Medway Towns for a number of his novels; Great Expectations among them. Magwitch escapes from a prison hulk on the Medway before he finds Pip. Miss. Havisham is to be found in the more sedate part of Rochester. Seabrook is drawn to Dickens' alleged obsession with a grissly murder outside the Medway Towns. Of contemporary Medway, he is sometimes damning of both place and inhabitants. He notes the microclimate of Chatham, where Dickensian spectres cohabit with youthful prostitutes who ‘pound locked cars like gibbons at Longleat’.
TS Eliot wrote "the Wasteland" in Margate and Seabrook struggles to find traces of Eliot. Seabrook describes his own train journeys into the melancholy world of these faded seaside resorts. Writing in 2002, he predates recent 'gentrification' trends on the Isle of Thanet although the presence of asylum seekers in cheap seaside lodgings remains a constant. Like much of the Kent coast, Thanet has an underlying bleakness but also a depth and richness of history and experience that cleaner, happier places will never know. This is the land (and sky) that inspired artists from Turner to Van Gogh to Tracey Emin.
Robin Maughan, author of The Servant, also took inspiration in Kent and John Buchan's Thirty Nine steps allegedly drew on Broadstairs. In Broadstairs, Seabrook explores a network of Nazi sympathisers and conmen active in the 1930s. There is also reference to another child of the Kentish shore and of a British Fascist with Kent connections, Audrey Hepburn who breakfasted in Folkestone years before she did at Tiffany's.
The offbeat vibe of seaside towns that have known better days is a magnet for the eccentric,the lost and the recovering. Charles Hawtrey lived out his days after "Carry On" disgrace in Deal. Seabrook notes Hawtrey being banned from every pub in that small town before alcohol and cigarettes eventually did their worst. Seabrook recalls that at his death, this much loved onscreen actor and clown could only draw nine living souls to his funeral at Mortlake crematorium.
Seabrook was himself recovering, having lost a fiancee to cancer. This book is neither conventional nor particularly easy to read. For those familiar with Kent it is well worth the effort. For those unfamiliar with Kent but interested in the land between London and France it may also be illuminating for it shows, what those who live in Kent already know, that all the devils are here.
Seabrook is rare in his ability to capture a sense of place but this may not initially be apparent. The accounts of Kent shoreline settlements start with almost blurred perception as if through a Medway river fog. Over time, the grim but fascinating reality of Kent past and present becomes clear. Yet, this is also a book about a creative county where people make the best of and overcome a bad lot. There is hidden deprivation in Kent that few metropolitans either expect or recognise. Seabrook revels in this and the people and stories it has created. Seabrook was a man of unsanitised Kent and much in this book will be recognised and revealed to those who know that side of the county.
Seabrook himself died prematurely at 49, found alone in his Canterbury flat in 2009. A few allegations of foul play were made, largely on the basis of his second book, "Jack of Jumps" which explored aspects of the criminal underworld. These allegations seem without real foundation but Kent surely lost a talented son far too soon.
April 5, 2020
Astonishing - ostensibly a nimble travelogue/ psychogeographical jaunt around the Kent coast, but really a dizzying excuse for Seabrook to join several dots to create a sort of parallel history of 20th century Britain. We get true crime; Carry On films; Performance and The Servant; John Buchan; Oswald Mosley and Lord Haw Haw; Charles Hamilton; T S Eliot; Freddie Mills; Somerset Maugham; Dickens and Collins and so much more. The best of it is that Seabrook has this extraordinary ability to combine brilliant ideas into a greater whole, to push them into a shape you only really see looming as they all come together. Some of it may seem a reach when you think about it afterwards, but while you’re reading it everything feels important and vital and part of wider, murkier whole. An extraordinary book
May 30, 2018
Essays mainly concerning the tragic, violent and often sordid lives of the famous sons of various Kent coastal towns, with digressions into art and film criticism. Linking them all - aside from geography and the general tone of sadness and horror - are oblique glimpses into the life of the author/narrator. And something is clearly up: “There are things I haven’t mentioned. Private matters. They’re on me all day long.” More than the essays themselves, it’s this that gives the book its weird power, along with the knowledge that David Seabrook died young and alone in his flat, inspiring rumours that he was murdered. The biographical sketches may seem unfocused but stick around for the strange and unsettling ending.
March 19, 2018
Remarkably its own thing. Like walking around inside someone else’s head on a cloudy day.
July 24, 2009
The only book I have ever begun to read and given up on!!
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November 16, 2025All the Devils Are Here is a fascinating, peripatetic journey through a series of seaside towns in East Kent. That makes it sound twee and sentimental. It’s anything but.
The first essay, “Daddlands”, starts in Rochester at Gad’s Hill Place, the red-brick house where Dickens died, then heads to Chatham, the hometown of Robert and Richard Dadd. If I hadn’t read Nina Allan’s terrific Good Neighbours, I wouldn’t have recognised the “Dadd” name or known what was coming. But I had, so I knew that Richard Dadd, in the grip of a psychotic break, killed his father, believing the older man to be the devil. Dadd was committed to an asylum, where he painted some of the most startling, ethereal, and extraordinary depictions of fairies ever rendered. Yet even knowing this, I wasn’t prepared for how Seabrook, with a touch of journalistic and literary genius, connects Dadd and his crime back to Dickens and the theories surrounding the “true” ending of his unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood. It’s genuinely riveting, complete with a quick visit to the Charles Dickens Centre, where back in the 90s it costs £3.60 to take a short tour.
With the second essay, “In Town Tonight”, Seabrook travels to Broadstairs and provides an unsettling look at British fascism. The focal point is Naldera, the twentieth-century holiday home of (takes a deep breath) “George-Nathaniel Curzon, the first Marquess Curzon of Kedleston in Derbyshire and the last Viceroy of India under Queen Victoria.” Curzon’s daughter, Cynthia, married Oswald Mosley, founder of the British Union of Fascists (BUF) and all-round arsehole. Mosley leads us to William “Lord Haw-Haw” Joyce, BUF’s Director of Propaganda, and fellow Nazi (and Mosley’s mate) Alfred Tester, who moved into Naldera with his family in 1930. As much as Seabrook despises Tester’s politics, he’s clearly taken by the many tall tales that have accumulated around the man. One of those stories provides Seabrook with a link to the essay’s literary heart: John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps, the title a reference to a wooden staircase leading down to the beach not far from Naldera. Apparently, “just before the outbreak of war, Tester escaped via the ‘thirty-nine’ steps to the safety of a waiting U-boat. One step at a time, down to a moonless sea, sweaty Nazi paws clutching at the chalk.”
If I enjoyed the first two essays, I loved the book’s third and final piece, “Tombatism (a touch)”. This is the most digressive of the chapters, skipping between Charles Hawtrey to Somerset Maugham’s brother Robin, to the tragic story of Peter Arne. The latter I was aware of due to a bit of morbid Doctor Who trivia: Arne was murdered just after a costume fitting for the fifth Doctor story Frontios (he was to play Chief Science Officer Range, the role ultimately performed by William Lucas). Seabrook’s reconstruction of Arne’s final day — bludgeoned to death in his apartment — and the subsequent investigation is moving and sad, not least because Arne’s sexuality became central to his death. In fact, if you hadn’t already noticed, all the men in the essay, including boxer Freddie Mills — who was linked to the Jack the Stripper murders — and Seabrook’s interlocutor Gordon Meadows (who pops in and out of the piece), are gay. Seabrook doesn’t judge these men (though you can imagine him chuckling over Hawtrey’s drunken antics), but there’s a deep sadness in this essay — of men hiding in the shadows, hiding who they are.
Yes, the Kent seaside, with its Nazi sympathisers, murderers, and alcoholic Carry On actors, comes off as a bit sordid. Even its rich literary history has a dark tinge. And yet, it’s that messiness — the meandering structure and dilapidated places and people — that makes All the Devils Are Here such an enjoyable read.*
*I didn’t mention Sebald once!
The first essay, “Daddlands”, starts in Rochester at Gad’s Hill Place, the red-brick house where Dickens died, then heads to Chatham, the hometown of Robert and Richard Dadd. If I hadn’t read Nina Allan’s terrific Good Neighbours, I wouldn’t have recognised the “Dadd” name or known what was coming. But I had, so I knew that Richard Dadd, in the grip of a psychotic break, killed his father, believing the older man to be the devil. Dadd was committed to an asylum, where he painted some of the most startling, ethereal, and extraordinary depictions of fairies ever rendered. Yet even knowing this, I wasn’t prepared for how Seabrook, with a touch of journalistic and literary genius, connects Dadd and his crime back to Dickens and the theories surrounding the “true” ending of his unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood. It’s genuinely riveting, complete with a quick visit to the Charles Dickens Centre, where back in the 90s it costs £3.60 to take a short tour.
With the second essay, “In Town Tonight”, Seabrook travels to Broadstairs and provides an unsettling look at British fascism. The focal point is Naldera, the twentieth-century holiday home of (takes a deep breath) “George-Nathaniel Curzon, the first Marquess Curzon of Kedleston in Derbyshire and the last Viceroy of India under Queen Victoria.” Curzon’s daughter, Cynthia, married Oswald Mosley, founder of the British Union of Fascists (BUF) and all-round arsehole. Mosley leads us to William “Lord Haw-Haw” Joyce, BUF’s Director of Propaganda, and fellow Nazi (and Mosley’s mate) Alfred Tester, who moved into Naldera with his family in 1930. As much as Seabrook despises Tester’s politics, he’s clearly taken by the many tall tales that have accumulated around the man. One of those stories provides Seabrook with a link to the essay’s literary heart: John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps, the title a reference to a wooden staircase leading down to the beach not far from Naldera. Apparently, “just before the outbreak of war, Tester escaped via the ‘thirty-nine’ steps to the safety of a waiting U-boat. One step at a time, down to a moonless sea, sweaty Nazi paws clutching at the chalk.”
If I enjoyed the first two essays, I loved the book’s third and final piece, “Tombatism (a touch)”. This is the most digressive of the chapters, skipping between Charles Hawtrey to Somerset Maugham’s brother Robin, to the tragic story of Peter Arne. The latter I was aware of due to a bit of morbid Doctor Who trivia: Arne was murdered just after a costume fitting for the fifth Doctor story Frontios (he was to play Chief Science Officer Range, the role ultimately performed by William Lucas). Seabrook’s reconstruction of Arne’s final day — bludgeoned to death in his apartment — and the subsequent investigation is moving and sad, not least because Arne’s sexuality became central to his death. In fact, if you hadn’t already noticed, all the men in the essay, including boxer Freddie Mills — who was linked to the Jack the Stripper murders — and Seabrook’s interlocutor Gordon Meadows (who pops in and out of the piece), are gay. Seabrook doesn’t judge these men (though you can imagine him chuckling over Hawtrey’s drunken antics), but there’s a deep sadness in this essay — of men hiding in the shadows, hiding who they are.
Yes, the Kent seaside, with its Nazi sympathisers, murderers, and alcoholic Carry On actors, comes off as a bit sordid. Even its rich literary history has a dark tinge. And yet, it’s that messiness — the meandering structure and dilapidated places and people — that makes All the Devils Are Here such an enjoyable read.*
*I didn’t mention Sebald once!
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September 12, 2021Between its electoral record, Great Expectations, and one spectacularly bleak childhood visit, Kent used to have grim associations for me - associations which the past decade has done a lot to unravel. Seabrook's nightmare journey among the county's damaged and dangerous, on the other hand, is all my old suspicions wrenched into outsider art. Here are the great at low ebbs - Dickens fading out, disappointed by his progeny; Eliot at the end of his tether in the shelter on the sands, looking out across a ruined Europe. But also the ones who were compromised from the start, car-crashes and shits from Charles Hawtrey to Lord Haw-Haw. Towards the end we even get the story behind The Servant*, and its transitional stage via another layer of dipsomaniac queen of the old school. Yet however grubby the past Seabrook finds under each rock, the trajectory to his present remains one of decay and diminishment; now Joe Pasquale owns the land where Richard Dadd did the deed. All of this rendered in a style suggesting a less wispy Sebald, or Iain Sinclair without his observer's distance. I'm trying to resist ending on the phrase 'Kental breakdown', but it's not easy.
*Which appears to have taken place in Alexandria, and comes just after a Soho section, such that by this point one definitely wonders whether the material was getting away from Seabrook. But then it's not a book which could have been written by a person who was on top of things in general.
*Which appears to have taken place in Alexandria, and comes just after a Soho section, such that by this point one definitely wonders whether the material was getting away from Seabrook. But then it's not a book which could have been written by a person who was on top of things in general.
January 26, 2021
Like many other people, I was drawn to read this rather obscure book by an edition of the excellent books podcast Backlisted which raves about it. While I’m not as enthusiastic about it as they were, I still found much to enjoy and be fascinated by. It falls into that rather strange category ‘psycho geography’, chiefly represented by Ian Sinclair.
Ostensibly, a series of essays about the author’s visits to Kent seaside towns, it weaves together numerous stories of literary and artistic figures who have inhabited the area - such as Dickens, John Buchan and Richard Dadd. As the title suggests, the mood is dark and mysterious with murders round every corner. Definitely a marmite book- you will either love it or hate it.
Ostensibly, a series of essays about the author’s visits to Kent seaside towns, it weaves together numerous stories of literary and artistic figures who have inhabited the area - such as Dickens, John Buchan and Richard Dadd. As the title suggests, the mood is dark and mysterious with murders round every corner. Definitely a marmite book- you will either love it or hate it.
January 28, 2024
I'm not sure where to begin with this. I've never read anything like it, and only found it because of the Backlisted podcast.
It's sort of a set of essays, niche stories about places in Kent, but that doesn't begin to describe it. It's split into three parts (Daddlands, In Town Tonight, Tombatism (a touch). Daddlands (mostly about the painter Richard Dadd) is the strongest of the three.
Each section wanders, subject to subject, interspersed with tangentially related topics, observations about the local area and leading, often sinister, vignettes from the authors life.
I'm glad I read this, if only for the moments of great writing, flashes of genius among the banality. Probably best read with minimal expectation.
It's sort of a set of essays, niche stories about places in Kent, but that doesn't begin to describe it. It's split into three parts (Daddlands, In Town Tonight, Tombatism (a touch). Daddlands (mostly about the painter Richard Dadd) is the strongest of the three.
Each section wanders, subject to subject, interspersed with tangentially related topics, observations about the local area and leading, often sinister, vignettes from the authors life.
I'm glad I read this, if only for the moments of great writing, flashes of genius among the banality. Probably best read with minimal expectation.
January 8, 2024
bizarre exploration of several English towns with reference to their historical literary inhabitants
starts very strongly for me with Dickens and then speculative piece on Lord Haw-Haw, Oswald Mosley, and Audrey Hepburn's father, but becomes overly-Gonzo for me with final longer section on the rambling recollections of an ageing homosexual
starts very strongly for me with Dickens and then speculative piece on Lord Haw-Haw, Oswald Mosley, and Audrey Hepburn's father, but becomes overly-Gonzo for me with final longer section on the rambling recollections of an ageing homosexual
July 1, 2020
Holy hell what a book: an underground history of the English coastline told through a Victorian painter who murdered his father, a fascist con artist, Charles Dickens’ unsolved mystery, The 39 Steps & a lot more.
This is Kent like you’ve never seen it, & All The Devils Are Here.
This is Kent like you’ve never seen it, & All The Devils Are Here.
July 30, 2021
Interesting idea but sometimes he goes into tedious ramblings. Although some sections were entertaining.
April 25, 2019
I would have never known about this book had I not listened to “Backlisted”, an awesome books podcast hosted by two men based in the UK. When I heard about it on the program, I had to get it because I still couldn’t figure out what the book was really about and it made a great impression on me. I realized these two things can be conceptually opposite but it is the best way I can describe what impact the book had on me. The book blurb on the dust jacket reads “Dark, strange and immediate, All the Devils Are Here is a classic work of sui generis British literature.” This nicely sums up the generality of the book, particularly the bit about “sui generis British literature”. It is one of those very strange, peculiar books that belong to nowhere. When I finished reading this book, I felt sad, heavy and anti-liberated if such a thing is a word. It seems I have been listening to a broken (both emotionally and financially), angry and possibly psychotic bisexual/gay man writing his diary out loud. Maybe I am inside of his head. Or maybe he is hanging at the edge of the paper, whispering dark secrets into my ears. It is strange, sad and unusual. So how does one even begin to talk about it? After I finished reading it, I couldn’t help myself asking what it was all about. Not as a philosophical pondering, but like WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT ALL ABOUT?
Seabrook is from Kent and this book is about dodgy, depressing towns in Kent coast. But to say this is about places in Kent would be an oversimplification of man’s complex interior. As I read further into the book, I sensed the author was rapidly losing his shit. It was never clear to me why he wanted to talk about what/who he wanted to talk about. Starting with Margate, he talks about T.S. Eliot who suffered a nervous break. Then he moves onto Charles Dickens and his untimely death in Rochester, to Chatham where the painter Richard Dadd killed his father with a knife, to Deal where alcoholic gay man Charles Hawtrey was "reeling round town like an old wasted weasel”, and move onto more damaged perverts. Seabrook latches onto the subject, stays with the story as long as he wants to talk about it and then he moves on.
What makes it even more strange is a random collection of grainy photos the author pasted onto the book; they are borderline creepy. One photo stands out, which is one of Freddie Mills with Speedo swim short. He is standing on what looks to be a kitchen counter. He is looking down with arms akimbo and his head is nearly touching the ceiling. There is a smiling man looking up at him at the bottom left of the frame. I am not sure what roles these weird photographs are supposed to play. They seem to say more about the author than the subject.
Towards the end of the book, Seabrook makes a short reference to his deceased wife. What, a wife? This comes out of nowhere. In the last chapter “Tombatism”, he is in Deal. Up until this point, I was not clear on what exactly he did for a living (and apparently in real life, people around him also wondered the same). “…It’s a free country. No one who knows me will think any less of me for doing what I’m going to do now….Let’s face it; there are things I haven’t mentioned. Private matters. They’re on me all day long..Lonely the man without bailiffs. It’s a question of rent; no more, or less”. He sees a man in a bar and he is negotiating in his head. Sex for money…Matter of paying the rent…. I feel sorry for him. I am afraid for him. He is pushing, pulling, measuring, and calculating. The man notices Seabrook and sits down to have a drink. He tells a weird story of a person who he thought was a boy. He pulled the boy’s hood down to tease him. It wasn’t a boy, he said. It was Charles Hawtrey. Seabrook puts away his gin and squeezes his hand, letting him know it’s time to go. And the book ends.
This isn’t journalism – it is obvious Seabrook spent no time in fact-checking lives of his subject. This is not an essay, not a memoir, not a short story. Seabrook talks non-stop but I know nothing about the author. He is fidgety, possibly deranged and he cares little about what you think as a reader. This is the reason why I like this book. Seabrook is mad. He tells very specific stories that don’t fit into anything. He lays them all out and walks away. I have always been drawn to non-conformist who walks with the beat of his own drum. Seabrook died young and nothing much is known about him. These days you can Google about anything but not him. No doubt this will add to this book’s cult status.
Seabrook is from Kent and this book is about dodgy, depressing towns in Kent coast. But to say this is about places in Kent would be an oversimplification of man’s complex interior. As I read further into the book, I sensed the author was rapidly losing his shit. It was never clear to me why he wanted to talk about what/who he wanted to talk about. Starting with Margate, he talks about T.S. Eliot who suffered a nervous break. Then he moves onto Charles Dickens and his untimely death in Rochester, to Chatham where the painter Richard Dadd killed his father with a knife, to Deal where alcoholic gay man Charles Hawtrey was "reeling round town like an old wasted weasel”, and move onto more damaged perverts. Seabrook latches onto the subject, stays with the story as long as he wants to talk about it and then he moves on.
What makes it even more strange is a random collection of grainy photos the author pasted onto the book; they are borderline creepy. One photo stands out, which is one of Freddie Mills with Speedo swim short. He is standing on what looks to be a kitchen counter. He is looking down with arms akimbo and his head is nearly touching the ceiling. There is a smiling man looking up at him at the bottom left of the frame. I am not sure what roles these weird photographs are supposed to play. They seem to say more about the author than the subject.
Towards the end of the book, Seabrook makes a short reference to his deceased wife. What, a wife? This comes out of nowhere. In the last chapter “Tombatism”, he is in Deal. Up until this point, I was not clear on what exactly he did for a living (and apparently in real life, people around him also wondered the same). “…It’s a free country. No one who knows me will think any less of me for doing what I’m going to do now….Let’s face it; there are things I haven’t mentioned. Private matters. They’re on me all day long..Lonely the man without bailiffs. It’s a question of rent; no more, or less”. He sees a man in a bar and he is negotiating in his head. Sex for money…Matter of paying the rent…. I feel sorry for him. I am afraid for him. He is pushing, pulling, measuring, and calculating. The man notices Seabrook and sits down to have a drink. He tells a weird story of a person who he thought was a boy. He pulled the boy’s hood down to tease him. It wasn’t a boy, he said. It was Charles Hawtrey. Seabrook puts away his gin and squeezes his hand, letting him know it’s time to go. And the book ends.
This isn’t journalism – it is obvious Seabrook spent no time in fact-checking lives of his subject. This is not an essay, not a memoir, not a short story. Seabrook talks non-stop but I know nothing about the author. He is fidgety, possibly deranged and he cares little about what you think as a reader. This is the reason why I like this book. Seabrook is mad. He tells very specific stories that don’t fit into anything. He lays them all out and walks away. I have always been drawn to non-conformist who walks with the beat of his own drum. Seabrook died young and nothing much is known about him. These days you can Google about anything but not him. No doubt this will add to this book’s cult status.
August 14, 2017
Like a good number of other Goodreads reviewers I was prompted to read All the Devils are Here by listening to the edition of the excellent Backlisted podcast that focused on David Seabrook's dark and peculiar travelogue. Now hard to get hold of in physical format (a consequence of its new found popularity among Backlisted listeners I suspect), I was able to get my hands on a copy quickly and cheaply through the excellent public library interlending system - one of the overlooked glories of civilised life in the U.K.
I spent four years or so living on or near the Kent coast in the mid-eighties. Looking back, there was definitely something odd about the place and Seabrook captures that very well. Starting with T. S. Eliot on Margate sands connecting 'nothing with nothing', and extending both backwards and forwards in time to uncover tales of madness, murder, dissolution and secret networks of fascists and Nazi sympathisers, he drifts through this appalling psychoscape, picking at scabs that others would prefer to leave covered.
Seabrook is a rather queasy and slightly unnerving travelling companion as he guides us through the darker reaches of the Kent coast, and the reader starts to fear for his safety and sanity, particularly in the final stages of the journey, ending up in a Deal that feels like something out of Don't Look Now.
I spent four years or so living on or near the Kent coast in the mid-eighties. Looking back, there was definitely something odd about the place and Seabrook captures that very well. Starting with T. S. Eliot on Margate sands connecting 'nothing with nothing', and extending both backwards and forwards in time to uncover tales of madness, murder, dissolution and secret networks of fascists and Nazi sympathisers, he drifts through this appalling psychoscape, picking at scabs that others would prefer to leave covered.
Seabrook is a rather queasy and slightly unnerving travelling companion as he guides us through the darker reaches of the Kent coast, and the reader starts to fear for his safety and sanity, particularly in the final stages of the journey, ending up in a Deal that feels like something out of Don't Look Now.
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