of Tennyson Down and out to the lonely fort overlooking the Needles. As an icon for old England, what views can rival these chalk plates sawing into the blue? It’s a calendar shot, like Stonehenge or the Dover cliffs but I wonder what it means to those who didn’t grow up with Spitfire stories, the silver jubilee and power strikes. Are they any less spellbound by those war era tales of the plucky island fighting off invaders? The Needles as a national symbol might be some Dad’s Army throwback but I can’t stare down at them without thinking of a gateway to England, chalk flag border posts stamped into the seabed. And old rusting guns look down on them too, of course, tunnel searchlight boxes and blackened pom-pom mounts. The army sends its soldiers to all frontier outposts, our postcard English sea tail is no exception.
