Every May Day, bundles of branches tied with colourful ribbons appear on Hastings’ shopfronts and streetlamps. Drumming swells as crowds of green-clad bogies, festival-goers in shorts and t-shirts, and Morris dancers fill Hastings’ winding streets. And then comes the main event: Jack in the Green’s wizened face appears on a towering cone of leaves topped with a crown at the centre of the festivities. The Jack in the Green festival marks the passage of spring to summer. But from where does this bizarre tradition originate? The roots are too tangled to know for sure, and the first recording of the festival was in 1770. However, some believe celebrations of the ‘Green Man’ hail from the pagan Anglo-Saxons who established England’s historic county of Sussex, and the myth transformed with each subsequent generation. But Jack in the Green is only one of Sussex’s many mysteries. Fearsome beasts, terrifying giants, cackling witches, and plucky fairies are just a few of the creatures populating the folklore of this strange and savage land. Ending with the modern celebration of the Jack in the Green festival, this collection of stories traces the roots of Sussex’s centuries of tall tales, mythology, and folklore.

With screaming demons in Wealdon copses and dragons lurking in bottomless ponds, the folk tales of Sussex truly represent the diversity of the area. Meet knuckers and willocks, mawkins and marsh monsters, the Piltdown Man, Lord Moon of Amberley Swamp and the princess of the Mixon Hole. There is also something terrible crawling to Crawley from Gatwick, which develops a degraded appetite in a bin ... From ghosts and madmen to witches and wise women, Michael O’Leary reveals many of the hidden horrors of Sussex – horrors that can be found in the most beautiful places, or that lurk beneath the seemingly mundane. Amid these dark tales are stories of humour and silliness, of love, lust and passion.

Although only children at the time, the Second World War had a permanent effect on the schoolboys who lived through the conflict. Watching a country preparing for war and then being immersed in the horrors of the Blitz brought encounters and events that some will never forget. Now in their seventies and eighties, many are revisiting their memories of this period of upheaval and strife for the first time. As he fully immersed himself in rural life in the little village of Pulborough, the author witnessed some extraordinary events, from finding an injured German airman in the woods, to watching Bailey bridges being erected in the fortified village and observing the Battle of Britain raging overhead. After four years of highs and lows, evacuation had a lasting effect, and although he could not wait to return to London, the author moved back to Sussex as soon as he was old enough. Due to it proximity to the south coast, West Sussex was a dangerous place in the wartime years, and this poignant book documents events indelibly inscribed on a generation's minds.

This timely book explores the transitional experiences of undergraduates in minority groups studying at university and how arts methods and practices can play an important role in facilitating these transitions. Based on research from UK universities, this volume is the first to draw together the experiences of educators in the humanities and social sciences who integrate sensory methodologies in taught curriculum, in relation to arts educators who add extra-curricular arts practice. It offers an original, contextualised analysis of how to enable university structures to adapt to complexity, difference, and diversity, taking the view that arts practice forms meeting points for confident interconnection and spaces of self-representation. It outlines the novel concept of sensory transition in how arts practices can be used to address issues of inclusion, diversity, and self-representation for minority groups. Each chapter offers an in-depth analysis of significant issues, such as dimensions of race, gender, and class and the specificities of social and cultural group experiences as they occur in arts practice. The book reflects on the decolonisation of university structures and curriculum and demonstrates how universities can support students and build spaces for self-representation in academic courses. Accessible and investigative, this book is essential reading for academics, researchers, and postgraduate students in the field of higher education, inclusion, and arts methods. It will also be of great interest to higher education staff interested in decolonisation, diversity, and university futures.

The Little Book of Sussex is a funny, fast-paced, fact-packed compendium of the sort of frivolous, fantastic or simply strange information which no-one will want to be without. Here we find out about the most unusual crimes and punishments, eccentric inhabitants, famous sons and daughters and literally hundreds of wacky facts (plus some authentically bizarre bits of historic trivia). David Arscott's new book gathers together a myriad of data on Sussex. There are lots of factual chapters but also plenty of frivolous details which will amuse and surprise. With chapters on folklore, history, geography, celebrity Sussexians and much more, this is an ideal book for all those who know and love this quintessentially English county.