High summer, and from the Langdon Cliffs Visitor Centre, cross-Channel ferries resembled great lumps of chalk, cut loose from the cliffs. The White Cliffs of Dover is a bit of Britain we all think we know, a symbol of England so frequently deployed in image, song and advert that we no longer really see it. A walk along the clifftop is a subtle challenge to our expectations. The hazy view into Dover was unprepossessing: the clank-clank of cars entering ferries; an enormous warehouse containing bananas; and, in the far distance, the nuclear hulks of Dungeness A and B. Turn east, however, and industrial vistas were replaced by a thyme-scented sward of scabious and sun-bleached grasses. On a quiet night, these high cliffs above a calm sea may spark the melancholia of Matthew Arnold’s ‘Dover Beach’. Or they could trigger a bombastic admiration for this fortress built by nature, this precious...
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