Listen to part two of Mike O’Brien’s soundscape: ‘A Very British Seaside’, while you take a grand tour of beachlife past and present.       From this to this? Humankind’s love of the beach started pretty early on. About 400 million years ago, or thereabouts, when our slimy forebears made the first step (or wriggle) from sea to shore. The rest – from Babylonian sun-worship, via Victorian bathing machine to Bardot’s string bikini – is history… Birth of Venus (detail), Sandro Botticelli, c.1485 It doesn’t get much better than this: a perfect 10, the über-bathing beauty... No, darlings, she’s out of your league... USA beauty queens of 1949 Halo, sailor! Sun gods and parasols, the missing link? LEFT and RIGHT: Sol and Shamash, Mithraic and Babylonian sun gods CENTRE: “The gateway to the mountains”, front cover Rhyl brochure Ra, ra! Go Egyptians! Go! This is one ancient sun-god who knew a thing or two about the perma-tan. Still bronzy after all these years. CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Taperet praying to the sun at its zenith, and also to the setting sun Akhenaten and Nefertiti worshipping Aten the sun god Aten Akhenaten and Nefertiti Gilgamesh is awesome to perfection. It was he who opened the mountain passes, who dug wells on the flank of the mountain. It was he who crossed the ocean, the vast seas, to the rising sun, who explored the world regions, seeking life. From The Epic of Gilgamesh A fourth century BC theory of the sea’s perpetual motion; or, how to DIY your waves, Aztec style. Churning the ocean, 386 BC And then God created woman... is this what he had in mind? Brigitte Bardot Civilising the sea? By the 1700s, Japanese women were anticipating Coco Chanel’s shoreline chic by two hundred years. LEFT: The sixth month, from ‘Minami juni ko’ (detail), Kiyonaga ga MIDDLE: A fashionable young man emerging from a bath-house (detail), Shunro ga RIGHT: From ‘Twelve months of the south’, a view of the Tenno (raft) festival (detail), Kiyonaga ga A beach at sunrise, Hyakurin Sori The autumn breeze rises Sugawara Michizane The autumn breeze rises on the shore at Fukiage – and those white chrysanthemums are they flowers? or not? or only breakers on the beach? Sugawara Michizane (845-903) was a Japanese scholar and poet of Chinese verse. Interior of a women's bath-house Private pleasures: stripping off, Victorian-style, was a complicated business. TOP: Bathing machine at Ostend CENTRE: Beach at Trouville, Eugene Boudin, 1863 BOTTOM: Girls bathing in Wilson Beach, USA, c.1910s George III at Waymouth, 1789 TOP: La partia di cricket sulla spiaggia, Franz Charlet, 1890 CENTRE: Playing ball on Wilson beach, USA BOTTOM: Healing sport, Tim Hetherington Near contemporaries: fully clothed, or au naturel in Tahiti? TOP LEFT: The beach at Trouville, Claude Monet, 1870 TOP RIGHT: Fatata te miti (By the sea), Paul Gauguin, 1892 BOTTOM RIGHT: Bather, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1882 BOTTOM LEFT: Le bagnanti, Pablo Picasso, 1918 CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: South Beach, John Sloan, 1907 Untitled, Georges Seurat, 1886 Etretat, Eugène le Poitevin, 1840 And soon enough, it started to catch on… TOP: Atlantic City, 1870 CENTRE LEFT: Coney Island, George C. Miller, 1932 CENTE RIGHT: Weegee, Coney Island, 1960s BOTTOM: Beach at Ratraf, Tunisia, Mark Affeldt ‘Move over Dali!’ Finding your patch on the beach ain’t easy. Bagnanti, Salvador Dali, 1924 The Creature from the Black Lagoon John Tranter Sunbathing on deck’s the done thing, but it makes the Brylcreem run and stain the collar of your poplin beach shirt. Palm trees drift by as though your sins had turned vegetable and semaphore. Sins of the laboratory, I mean, not the confessional . . . yes, the engine room looks suitable, and through the porthole a wise old man waiting patiently in the wavering water - that’s no priest! Captain! But the Captain’s a gutless foreigner, drinks gin, and never shaves. You pity the girl in the bathing suit she may be a palæontologist, but sure as eggs she’s going to get a terrible fright. And the ethnic extras, they have to die on our journey towards the knowledge that shimmers behind the South American façade. The priest turns his scaly back: that creature, rising like a new disease from the gene pool, why should we pity him? Deracinated, maybe, but what a guy! No, it’s wrong, don’t kiss him! I can feel it, soaking through the blood-brain barrier... he’s never known the touch of a woman’s...whoops! Here’s the nut with the speargun on a hunting spree - Duck, Tabby! Duck and cover! Here comes the bolt from the blue, to shut up sorrow, to stop up the barrel of fun like a dead king. And what colour is the blood, Doctor? Red? Can you explain that? And what of the offspring? John Tranter is editor of Jacket magazine. The beach, Moses Levy, 1919 Bathing beauties, sur la plage TOP: Wallace Levison, Narragansett Pier, New York, 1889 BOTTOM: French postcard, 1900 TOP: Wilson beach, USA, 1920s BOTTOM: Italy, 1940 Help me! I’m drowning! The unsung heroes of the sands! TOP: Dieppe, 1843 BOTTOM: Lifeguards testing a motor lung on a female bather, Clarendon beach, USA, 1929 Fast track to the seaside: the golden age of train travel opened up the beaches for a generation. Coco Chanel launched her career in Deauville, 1913, with a shop selling pillbox hats. After the extravagances of Edwardian millinery, she announced: ‘How can anyone think with those great things on their heads?’ Then she got herself a tan, and brown became the new white. Coco Chanel, Paris, 1959 ‘Oh I do like to be beside the seaside...’ Joseph Conrad, Herman Melville, Ernest Hemmingway, Virginia Woolf to Scott Fitzgerald, or Tennessee Williams in his deck chair... Tennesse Williams, Italy, 1956 Lights, camera, action! The sea shore became a ready-made movie-set for starlets and matinee idols. And where Hollywood paddled, the world followed… TOP LEFT: Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney in Two for the road TOP RIGHT: Lolita, Stanley Kubrick, 1962 CENTRE: Rita Hayworth, Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe BOTTOM LEFT: Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster in From Here to Eternity BOTTOM RIGHT: Poster for The Little Hut, starring Ava Gardner, Stewart Granger and David Niven Some like it hot: ‘Shell Oil!’ Was Marilyn the first globologger? LEFT: Tony Curtis as ‘Junior’ RIGHT: Marilyn Monroe and Jack Lemmon from ‘Some Like it Hot’ ‘By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea…’ Beachlife and the body beautiful: striking a pose, perfecting your swallow dive, or making like a salamander, and just lying comatose… ABOVE: Body builders, 1950s BELOW: The lagoon at the American University of Beirut (AUB) beach, Dr. Adib Abou-Haider, 1946 TOP LEFT: Dorothy Poynton Hill TOP RIGHT: Rimini, 1960 BOTTOM: Florida, 1950 For the more dictatorially challenged, spanning the shorelines became a point of pride (and propaganda). LEFT: Benito Mussolini, 1926 TOP RIGHT: Saddam Hussein BOTTOM RIGHT: Mao tse-tung Louis Reard, Paris, 1946 The first Bond movie. Ursula swaps scallop for conch, and does a latter day Botticelli Venus. Ursula Andress aka Honey Ryder in ‘Dr. No’ From ‘Bobby’ to ‘Baywatch’: iconic Hindi film of the sixties, to Malibu beach kitsch. LEFT: Dimple Kapadia as Bobby RIGHT: Yasmin Bleeth, Pamela Anderson, David Hasselhoff From Hyundai, South Korea, to Brits at the beach, England. Photographs by Jin Kwon and Bec Wingrave. Sea-Fever John Masefield I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by, And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking, And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking. I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied; And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying, And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying. I must down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life, To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife; And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over. John Masefield was English Poet Laureate from 1930-1967. The sea, Chile, Alejandra Millan Larivera Until next Summer, kids, wherever you are. There’s nothing like sand between your toes and a clear view of the ocean. See you on the beach!

From the South China Sea to Florida's South Beach; lobsters and sharks; icebergs, canals and coral reefs - openDemocracy's “Shorelines” project has offered a lyrical combination of voice, image and narrative. Now, as it reaches the shore's limit, get ready for the big swell. We present an exclusive compilation: the sound of the sea and a pick of some of our best images.

From reef paths to shining beaches, his native Florida to Canary Islands birthplace, Ryal Mills lives for surfing. Waiting for the next swell, he shares the beauty, the passion, and the business of being “inside the tube”.

Caspar Henderson visits a remote atoll in the Pacific Ocean state of Palau to help protect coral reefs against the effects of global climate change. In the process he encounters a world of natural beauty, enriching humanity, and surprising history that makes him reflect on life’s fundamentals.

Lake Balaton represents for Hungarians historical pride, cultural symbol, and linguistic tap-root. But for Zuzsanna Ardó it is also a place of remembered pleasures of childhood, motherhood, and belonging.

Fishing the world’s oceans is killing–field and love’s labour, pitiless trade and human adventure. Amy Prinsloo rides every wave. This is her stunning, loving, gut–wrenching, unforgettable memoir.

“The third world war will be a war over water”. Acclaimed documentary filmmakers Sanjay Barnela and Vasant Saberwal describe the experience of filming India’s current water crisis and tell the story of a people in search of water. Plus poetry inspired by their films from Maya Khosla.

“Even in his sleep he longed for the ocean”. On the edge of England’s wild North Yorkshire coast, openDemocracy crosses generations in this exclusive of sound, photography and storytelling. Hear Candida Clark read from her acclaimed novel of grief and redemption, “The Mariner’s Star”, while her mother, Sally Heywood, evokes the experience of a once-vibrant fishing community and remembers “the last of the last”.

“If there is a God / She lives under the sea”. openDemocracy dips its toes in the South China Sea with “Wavelines”, a stunning exhibition in images and words of life beneath Malaysia’s Perhentian and Redang Islands, organised by the National Art Gallery of Malaysia. Angela Goh introduces the project, Ellen Butler describes the deep-sea experience, and Mano Maniam dives for poetic pearls.

The vast experiences, stories, and longings of generations of local people are the sediment of Singapore’s tiny river estuary. openDemocracy presents six poems inspired by the rich human resources in the past of the south-east Asian city state.

The work of Pele Cox, a young English poet, presents a delicate, perceptive view of nature and human entanglements.

“There is nothing so ordinary as the extraordinary Principality of Ponquattuck.” The second of two extracts from Eva Salzman’s novel-in-progress, “Broken Island”.

“Once visited you take the smell of the sea with you everywhere, for the rest of your life”. On the shores of Ponquattuck, North America’s “Land of Water”, Eva Salzman finds the biggest treasure of all: the sea itself. The first of two extracts from a novel-in-progress, “Broken Island”.

Amid the “fan-like debris / of the tides”, Eva Salzman searches for another shore.

“If I walked to the sea now / what would I find?” Between winds and shelter, a young writer circumnavigates time and the shore’s edge.

Dominic Pote’s photographs surf the dynamic flow where seascape and landscape meet. openDemocracy exclusively previews his current exhibition, whose “Shorelines” title serendipitously matches our own theme. First, Candida Clark hears literary echoes in his visual art.

It’s easy to take a shoreline for granted: lost in contemplation of what lies beyond, the edge itself receives little notice. But what happens when even the brink begins to crumble? Faced with this dilemma, the Global Coral Reef Alliance haven’t stood still on the beach – they’ve grown their own.

“This is a fairground, we the entertainment”. In the dramas and longings of a tourist resort on a hot Caribbean night – from a crowded Friday night fish fry to solitary swims in the sea – Pauline Holdstock’s mesmerising story unfolds.

Memory, landscape and language meet and are transformed in Mick Delap’s salt-sprayed poems of Ireland's “oceanic West”.

“We should w_nder more”. The emotional undercurrents flowing between two near-identical English words fertilise Elly Clarke’s imagination.

“It was an evening to remember, sixty-five years ago.” A 96-year old Irish fisherman and writer recalls an everyday drama at the world’s edge.

An ocean-swell of memory opens on Lee’s 11th birthday trip to a South African beach with parents and twin brother. An extract from Jason Starmer’s novel-in-progress, “The Shadow Gulls”.

At the English seaside the girls Harriet and Hindy walk the shoreline between the Caribbean and Britain - between grey tea, grey donkeys and the grey, grey sky and the vibrant, lost colours of home. An exclusive extract from Donna Daley-Clarke’s novel-in-progress, “A Lazy Eye”.

A seascape of language, memory, and distance by Imtiaz Dharker

Sienna knew that the ocean might not release her until it had drunk her breath and added her life to its own. But the encounter with Jonko and Sookramer was different. The concluding part of Jacob Ross’s memorable story.

“Nobody in de world kin dive like we”. Sienna Miller’s life on the edge of The Silent, the lagoon far below her island village, starts to shift with the arrival of two white strangers. The first part of Jacob Ross’s haunting story of belonging and self-discovery.

Behind the clichés of tacky commercialism and suburban sprawl that mark the eastern English county of Essex in the national imagination, lies another world: home-grown food, swimming by mudflats and the eternal cry of the oyster-catchers, finds openDemocracy’s associate editor.

In the searing Florida heat, on the eve of a Hindu-Jewish wedding, Shiromi Pinto is absorbed into the extraordinary life-forms of Miami’s South Beach: a swelter of sex and forgetting.

In the second part of his essay, Caspar Henderson tracks the journey of the prolific and marvellous life-forms that pervade the world’s shorelines through the imagination of scientists, poets and novelists.

This is the first of a two-part piece to launch Objects & Projects’ latest theme: shorelines. What are they, how are they formed, and why do they hold such endless fascination? openDemocracy’s globalisation editor takes you to the end of the cliff… Read on, and a trip to the beach will never be the same again.