By J.A.Booker

The chance discovery of a 60-year old photograph album was the inspiration behind 'Blackshirts-on-Sea': a fascinating pictorial record of a long-forgotten aspect of twentieth-century British history. The album contained 'snap shots' taken at Summer Camps held in West Sussex during the 1930s.

But these were holiday makers with a difference. The happy campers were all British Blackshirts: followers of the Mosley brand of fascism that stalked the political arena during that turbulent decade. Surprisingly, there appears to have been no shortage of adherents of that 'ultimate creed of political incorrectness' at the Blackshirt Summer Camps. Up to 1,400 could be found under canvas at any one time enjoying the pleasures of sun, sea, sand and Sussex.

As the author rightly observes, perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the photographs is how completely normal most of these Hi-De-Hi Blackshirt campers look. And yet, almost 1000 of them were considered dangerous enough to be taken into custody when the Second World War began a few years later.

Whether the reader's interest is British social history, local Sussex history or just casual curiosity, 'Blackshirts-on-Sea' is compulsive reading for everyone with a fascination for pre-Burger twentieth-century Britain. 131-pages, 225-photographs: