350 Miles. An Essex Journey

By Ken Worpole and Jason Orton

Written by an occasional contributor to N16 Magazine, chair of the Clissold Park Users’ Group, and highly respected architectural, urban and social commentator, with photographs by Jason Orton, this book is an affectionate and often deeply affecting reflection on the coastline of Essex.

The title – 350 Miles – refers to the length of the coastline. Ken grew up in the area, and the experience has clearly made a lasting emotional impact on him. Essex is often dismissed as suburban, dull and culturally barren, but Ken’s wistful and poetic reflections on the littoral where land meets sea are amplified and enhanced by Orton’s evocative photographic vision, to convey a sense of pride in the county, a weird, eccentric beauty in the landscape and what people have attempted to make of it, from Southend Pier to Dungeness nuclear power station.

A parallel would be Fay Godwin meeting Derek Jarman, but the book transcends this unlikely pairing (in any event, they’re both well past Essex now). The photos are at once alienating and seductive in their composition and subjects, and the writing, as one would expect from Ken, is clear, concise and illuminating. There is a strange but somehow comforting sadness in these pages, as if you’re noticing something which is faintly troubling but also reassuring: a childhood memory which confused and disturbed you at the time but the memory of which now lifts your spirit.

Review by Rab MacWilliam