Hugh Philpott takes a tour of local film scores.

Whether playing herself or providing a ‘body double’ for a fictional location, Sussex has always loved being on the telly or at the movies. Today my mission is to seek out the most interesting of those screen cameos and stitch together a score fit for its cinematic soul. For that purpose, I am on a train and heading to Rye.

Rye is arguably one of the most starstruck of Sussex locations, a well-preserved town that never goes out without makeup. Keeping her half-timbered medieval overhangs and Georgian knockers all impeccably in place, Rye has perfected the art of always being ready for the paparazzi.

EF Benson knew all of this when he transformed Rye into the fictional town of Tilling for his Mapp and Lucia novels. Benson was living at Lamb House (now National Trust-owned) and gave it unashamedly to Miss Mapp. Channel 4 did the same, when they recreated Tilling in Rye for the 1985 adaptation, which has a witty and satirical score. Written by Jim Parker of Midsomer Murders fame, I include it on my list today. Drawing heavily on his woodwind skill, Parker uses oboe and clarinet to mimic Tilling gossip over porcelain teacups. A generous compound time then guarantees a trotting pace, which also manages to swish like summer dresses and parasols. The very essence of Mermaid Street on a bright summer’s day.

From Rye’s vantage points, over the levels and flats, you can see the sweeping dunes of Camber Sands. These have also been regulars on our screens over the years. Never afraid to drag-up for the cameras, these dunes have represented sand far and wide, from a camp version of the Sahara in Carry On… Follow that Camel, to the beaches of war-ravaged Northern France. From time to time, they appear as themselves, as in the touching beach scene with Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything. Jóhann Jóhannsson wrote a moving soundtrack so let’s have Forces of Attraction from that album as track two.

In contrast to Jóhannsson’s sweet melancholy, Alexandre Desplat gives us a stirring score for The Monuments Men, one of the occasions when Camber’s dunes step in as French beaches. Desplat’s suite of the main themes is a good cross section of that score. The suite is a through-composed medley which loosely follows the arc of the film. Full of changing colours and a variety of emotions. Where next? I catch the train to Hastings, just a few stops west. Like Rye, Hastings can often star as herself, but is also skilled impersonating other locations. Unlike Rye, Hastings is grittily alive, with an edgier feel. The town was also the inspiration for my current excursion. I was watching a TV period police drama – The Gold. The on-screen action was supposed to be on the Isle of Man. Notwithstanding the excitement of the unfolding plot, my attention became fixed on the backdrop. First a flat on Pelham Crescent, and then a chase along George Street. Clearly here was Hastings masquerading cleverly as Douglas. Simon Goff’s score for that TV series received much acclaim and so let’s add There’s Something About Islands.

Walking around the Old Town imagining the action revives memories of more fictional police drama. Anthony Horowitz’s Foyle’s War was set and filmed in Hastings. Jim Parker, on his second outing today, provides the soundtrack. For Foyle he creates a dignified, restrained and quiet theme turning again to his skill with woodwind. There are definite emotional undercurrents which channel wartime Britain, but he avoids either jingoism or mawkish sentimentality. This is calming music from another era.

It’s time to get on a number 99 bus for Eastbourne. I have one of those roaming tickets, which allows me to stop off in Bexhill-on-Sea en route. A town which enjoys a quiet, but long relationship with film and television. I had forgotten John Logie Baird retired here, carrying out his early trials in colour and 3D television. There is also evidence of early filmmaking. George Treville’s Anglo French film company based itself at the long-forgotten Bexhill Kursaal in order to make a series of Sherlock Holmes films from 1912. I discover that nugget on a poster in the Wetherspoons on Western Road, which was previously the Picture Playhouse. I am pleased to report that the conversion of that grand old theatre is not without its sympathy, care and cultural nods. Well done to all concerned. Let’s face it, many of the other old ‘picture houses’ suffered fates far worse.

Sadly that brings me to the Picture Playhouse’s sister theatre in Bexhill, the once iconic Bijou Cinema. This Art Deco palace of cinema had stood on nearby Station Road. Now simply a distant memory thanks to the wrecker’s ball, but it did have its own soundtrack in the form of the wonderfully named Madame Bertha Spinak and Her Orchestral Ensemble. Perhaps she accompanied those early silent Anglo French Sherlock Holmes films among the weekly showings. Sadly, I could find no record of what she or the many other tirelessly skilled picture-house pianists of the silent era might have played, but some of those Holmes films still do exist, skilfully remastered on YouTube with innovative contemporary soundtracks. I particularly like a piece by Rafael Krux called the Lonely Mountain, which appears with one opening sequence. The brooding orchestral textures create tension. The sound is ancient, windswept and desolate. It certainly adds depth to the early attempt at dramatic cinema.

Making my way back to the bus stop, I detour along Parkhurst Road. There’s no visible plaque, but I know that one of the few composers actually born and bred in Sussex lived here at number 14. Twentieth-century discrimination against female composers meant that Ruth Gipps never became as well known in her life as she should have. The last few years have seen some super recordings of her work. Let’s hear Knight in Armour, a piece she composed in 1940. It’s an orchestral tone poem, not used for either stage or screen to my knowledge, but wouldn’t it be perfect for a soundtrack to a heroic film featuring castles and brave derring-do. The piece sits well in this playlist; it works with the heroic sounds of more contemporary film music composers. Musically she is a Romantic generously drawing inspiration from nature, history and landscape. One senses that if she had been born later, when female composers were less obviously hamstrung, Gipps might have turned more directly to the screen.

I am back on the 99 heading for Eastbourne. Stop-start progress as I pass the De La Warr Pavilion, one of our region’s premier arts venues, allows me to think about the other roles that building and the promenade have played. The Colonnades feature in Sir Ian McKellen’s Richard III and there are interior scenes in a BBC version of Agatha Christie’s ABC Murders. Sadly, no time to explore today, as another castle beckons. But I will mention Rachel Portman’s score for the 2010 adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go, which featured some of Bexhill’s seafront mansion blocks towards its heart-rending climax. The track We All Complete creates the atmosphere I seek. It’s a harrowing tale and the music is in its way quietly devastating.

Now heading out through semi-rural suburbia, I am looking for Norman Bay and Pevensey Bay which form this part of the coastline. Looking due south over the green Pevensey Levels, punctuated with plump fluffy sheep, there is much to like. Ahead I soon see the distant ruins of the castle.

Pevensey, thought by some to be the first defensive position held by the Normans when they invaded in 1066, lies a little off in the distance over the eponymous levels. It would be wrong not to include Robert Sheldon’s Pevensey Castle for wind band here. There is no evidence that Sheldon, an American composer, ever visited Pevensey Castle, but he creates a surprisingly delicate piece which captures the stillness and tranquillity of the place perfectly. This music has a clear narrative and an unashamedly cinematic style. In less than five minutes it manages to include an up-tempo middle sequence with the qualities of epic heroic deeds.

The 99 hurtles on towards Eastbourne. As we leave the ancient drama of Pevensey, the route starts to pass stark cookie cutter new builds and endless celebrity endorsed caravan parks feeding on the last remaining windswept copses and green spaces. Manoeuvring endless roundabouts and acres of bleak out-of-town DIY stores and supermarkets, we near more traditionally built environments, where neat streets lined with aspirationally clad facades hint at the approach of the Victorian seaside town. I alight at Eastbourne Pier.

You don’t need to look far in this part of the world to find film and television locations. I’m opposite the Queen’s Hotel, which is just beyond the pier, walking east, and which doubles as Kensington Palace in The Crown. It makes the perfect location to recreate that bombshell of an interview between Princess Diana and Martin Bashir which appears in the episode Gunpowder. Martin Phipps, a skilled soundtrack composer, created a spare and haunting track for this. For that moment in the narrative, he is a master of emotional restraint building tension slowly: deep pulsing strings throb like an anxious heartbeat; fragile fragments of harmony that never quite resolve; and, most hauntingly, a wordless female vocal line – Diana? It feels almost like history whispering. It’s monarchy through a cracked spyglass: still gleaming, but only just.

I can’t end there. Too negative and too much emotion. Something more iconic from The Crown beckons. I need a Hollywood A-lister composing for the longest reigning real monarch. The atmospheric majesty of Hans Zimmer’s opening theme, thanks to a clever nod to Handel, does the trick.

Sussex has played many roles and no doubt there are more to come. It’s been good to go backstage across the far east of the region and explore the accompanying soundtrack. The lyrical froth of gossiping oboes in Rye; the clamour of heroic brass fit for a castle; a Bexhill knight in shining armour and finally Hans Zimmer’s clever rework of a well-known 18th-century coronation anthem help support the drama.

I shall sit for a moment longer with ear buds in, admiring the new take on Eastbourne’s famous Carpet Garden. I reflect on the welcome, if surprising, floral innovation and enjoy the drama it has provoked. Hair done, make-up on. Our region is always ready for her close-up.

Listen to the ROSA Magazine ‘Sussex on Screen’ playlist on Spotify.