Arts & culture

The Beautiful South is home to some of the UK’s best and well known cultural highlights. One of the best collections of modern British art can be seen at The Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, housed in a splendid Queen Anne townhouse; the exciting, new Lightbox Gallery in Woking; the recently restored Watts Gallery in Guildford, one of the best small galleries in the country; the much anticipated Jerwood Gallery in Hastings due to open in 2012; the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill - the South East region’s most significant centre for the contemporary arts; and a little further afield the new Turner Contemporary in Margate on the north Kent coast, will delight lovers of art and British culture.

Glyndebourne, deep in the Sussex countryside, offers world class performances of opera in a unique setting as part of its annual season; and the Chichester Festival has become part of the country’s touring season of theatre productions before they reach the London West End stage.

The area has a number of literary connections too. Charleston, the pretty cottage with an eccentric interior where the Bloomsbury Set once lived, can be visited; as well as Rudyard Kipling’s house at Bateman’s in Sussex; Jane Austen’s house at Chawton and her grave in Winchester Cathedral, as well as Boxhill in Surrey - the inspiration for many of her books; and not forgetting Charles Dickens who drew his inspiration for many of his books from Rochester and the towns of north Kent and whose birth in Portsmouth 200 years ago is being celebrated in 2012