FEW counties can boast of so much history as Sussex yet sometimes it is curiously shy to say so.

Pictures of people ignoring advice about the virus by crowding beaches in Brighton and Camber have appeared in papers and on TV this week. Yet tourists also come at quieter times of the year as much for heritage as for the salty pleasures of the sea.

The authorities are busy turning people away for health reasons at the moment but they should use this unique time to work out how to bring them back when the crisis is over and history should be part of that package.

Even though the most famous date in history is marked by calling the area around Battle and Hastings 1066 country, more could be made of it. The castle at Hastings is a disappointment to many visitors while other castles such as those at Bramber and Pevensey are not noticed much even by folk who have lived in Sussex all their lives.

There is little on the ground to mark the fact that two of Britain’s greatest heroes, Sir Winston Churchill and IK Brunel, were both schooled in Hove. Rudyard Kipling, that most celebrated man of empire, is well served in Sussex, where he settled, with houses and gardens.

Yet Hilaire Belloc,who loved his adopted county with an equal intensity, does not warrant much more than a windmill at Shipley.

Two of the greatest English composers, Elgar and Vaughan Williams, both lived in Sussex while Debussy composed La Mer while staying at Eastbourne. John Galsworthy who wrote The Forsyte Saga, lived in Bury although not much is made of this.

Henry James and EF Benson both occupied the same building in Rye, Lamb House, at different times. Even though it is owned by the National Trust, it is lacklustre.

The great Liberal Prime Minister William Gladstone often stayed in Brighton. Margaret Bondfield, the first Labour woman cabinet minister, worked in Western Road.

One of the best ways of pointing out historic associations is by putting up plaques on the homes of famous residents.

London naturally has the greatest number but Brighton and Hove has scores of them. They have been a feature of the resort for almost a century with some of the earliest designed by no less a person than the sculptor Eric Gill. Unfortunately many of the older plaques have been eroded to the point of being illegible. A further group using slate were hard to read from the start. The city council has a panel of experts, chaired by conservationist Roger Amerena, to give advice on who should be commemorated and the wording on every plaque.

But it has no budget and as each plaque costs more than £1,000 the choice is usually down to who can afford to pay for them.

Brighton and Hove is also unusual in having its fleet of buses named after famous people and this has proved to be extremely popular.

Many historic towns and cities have larger plaques giving information about buildings and personalities. In Lewes there are plaques about the Protestant martyrs, the dinosaur discoverer Gideon Mantel and Tom Paine, who played a prominent part in both the American and French revolutions.

There are several in Brighton and Hove but not nearly enough and they could be combined to provide a city trail.

In the 1980s, Hove Council, then a separate authority, commissioned a series of noticeboards giving information about historic parts of the town. These boards, sponsored by American Express, were well built, with the result that they still stand today although they badly need renovation and are in places woefully out of date.

There are also finger board signs in both Brighton and Hove giving information about where attractions are based and how long it would take to reach them on foot. They are in different styles and they are placed spasmodically with no particular logic to them.

When the Tories were the largest party on the council, their leader, Brian Oxley, asked me to chair a new group given the ponderous title of the Civic Awareness Commission. We did some minor good work before the Greens took over and disbanded us but I now realise I should have been much more assertive. As usual with journalists, we are much better at telling people what to do than doing it ourselves. But I think there is scope for Brighton and Hove, to make much more of the history on our doorsteps both for residents and tourists. Other towns such as Worthing, Eastbourne and Hastings could do the same.