I was pleased to read the piece by Adam Trimingham (The Argus, September 5) encouraging all of us to get back in the sea.

Picture postcards show how many more people were in the sea a century ago, and how far they ventured out.

The beaches of our Sussex resorts are probably the finest in the country for sea bathing. The sea is rarely too rough for swimming and while it cannot match Cornwall for surf, it can still produce decent waves from time to time.

And shingle beaches have the advantage over sandy ones - the stones stay in their place, whereas sand sticks to the skin.

What Adam didn't mention is that sea bathing was the cause of Brighton's transformation from semi-derelict fishing town to internationally renowned resort in the space of less than a century.

This began in the first half of the 18th Century when the important intellectual circle gathered around Dr Johnson discovered sea bathing as a means of sharpening their mental capacities, through the challenge to mind and body entailed in coping with the unconstrained force of the waves.

In Brighton heritage seems to be largely ignored, so we find proposals to squander prime seafront site by filling it up with a collection of so-called "beach" activities, whose only connection with the beach is that they take place on a rectangle of sand.

In this complex information age, we need to hone our mental capacities far more than did our 18th-Century forbears. Brighton provides a perfect opportunity for doing so through its long relationship with the sea and sea bathing.

-Henry Law, Brighton