The south coast of England has provided a fertile stimulus for writers, poets and travellers from Shakespeare's age to the present day. In earlier times the shore was the scene of dramatic invasions, battles and shipwrecks. The juxtaposition of people, localities and artistic creativity is often surprising - from the lighthouse at North Foreland in Kent, which inspired Wilkie Collins with the title of his novel The Woman in White; the sea air at Felpham dispensing The Bread of Sweet Thought to William Blake; to the brash delights and horrors of Brighton in the 1930s figuring in Graham Greene's Brighton Rock.