Beach and Star Fish, Seven Sisters Cliff, Eastbourne, John Piper. 1933-34

Off to Two Temple Place this afternoon for this year's exhibition - Sussex Modernism - bizarrely, in the most ornate surroundings you can imagine. It starts with a roast peacock banquet in 1914 for an old-school poet who thought this modern stuff was all tosh - well, that was a bit of a distraction because it set me off wondering what roast peacock tastes like and whether you'd need some bread sauce with it or a few chipolatas - but stay with me, because we're off on a tour of Sussex, starting at  Ditchling then on to Charleston Farmhouse ...  At the back of the catalogue, there's directions for a real tour - well, you'd have to whizz around to fit it all into a day, but it did make me long to visit Furlongs and Farleys Farmhouse and West Dean, though I'd rather take it slowly over a few long summer afternoons. Why rush?

Sussex wasn't just a rural escape, it was a threshold - gateway to Europe (for ideas and refugees) and also a site for potential invasion. Piper's cliffs are torn-out pages from the New Statesman: a strip of classified ads for English private schools, perhaps making some statement about the class system,  and (hard to read as they're upside down) news reports about Nazism in Germany

Landscape near Rye, Edward Burra, 1943

Burra wasn't too keen on Rye. (Harlem was more his thing.) He called it a 'ducky little Tinker Bell towne - like an itsy bitsy morgue, quayte dead' ,,, so I'm guessing he wasn't a fan of Mapp and Lucia. Dark clouds loom over his landscape ... are those skull bones being crushed in huge pincers?

Bronze Ballet, Edward Wadsworth, 1940

Wadsworth was working 'to the somewhat noisy accompaniment ... of the bombardment of Abbeville, Boulogne and Calais' - heard from across the Channel - 'all mingled with the call of the cuckoo.'

The Annunciation, Vanessa Bell, 1942

I've still never been to Berwick Church, but I do like the idea of the Angel Gabriel appearing in the walled garden at Charleston.

Two Temple Place has become a winter landmark for me; half way between Christmas and spring, although sadly the cake isn't anywhere near as good as it was a few years ago. Shame - but it's still free to get in and there's some fabulous pictures of this very quirky building here.