Today we’ll be exploring the seedy side of the seaside towns of Kent, in All the Devils are Here by David Seabrook. This is one of the most interesting books I’ve read in a long time. I bought it on a whim with a Christmas book voucher I’d been given as a present. I’d been in the bookstore for hours, carefully thinking about what to spend it on. I recognised the title, I’d seen it on blogs, in The Margate Bookshop, and it had somehow slid its way into my mind through conversations I’d overheard whilst sitting in a coffee shop in Margate.

I’ll admit, before I read the book I looked at the pastel pink and blue cover and the play-doh white font and thought ‘devils’ was meant in a teasing, trivial sense. After a few pages I realised that Seabrook was deadly serious, he was talking about the real thing.

Everyone I have spoken to about this book has marvelled over it. It’s darkness and eerie conjuring of the ghosts that inhabit the string of towns dotted along the coast here make for an intense and sobering read.

I’m going to start by reading the Prelude, and then a chapter called In Town Tonight which zooms in on a small and exclusive residential estate called North Foreland in Broadstairs, and a couple of it’s most famous residents…

After finishing this book, I was left in that place that only a few pieces of writing have had the ability to take me to, a feeling that I’d been changed, for better or worse, I can never tell.…I was interested in finding out more about David Seabrook and his other books. An online search directed me to his skeletal Wikipedia page, near the bottom of the page it says “Until his death he lived alone at Westside Apartments in Canterbury. He was discovered dead in his flat by Kent police.[1] There is unconfirmed speculation that Seabrook was murdered. However, this has never been officially established.[2]". He was 49. The true crime writer, investigator, antagonistic people prodder, lifter of veils, found dead in his flat in Canterbury under suspicious circumstances. Seabrook has transcended, he himself has become one of the ghosts that haunt the spaces between the lines of his writing.

I want to thank Granta publishers for allowing me to read some of this book to you. You can buy a copy direct from Granta, I’ve put the link up on my website www.waterboatwoman.com