One hundred years ago, Brighton and Hove were enjoying a spectacular revival after a long decline.

Their fortunes waned when royalty, in the shape of Queen Victoria, left in the 1840s and improved when her son, Edward VII, decided he liked the resort.

Even though Edward died in 1910 and his son George V was less tempted by Brighton’s charms, the boom continued.

This was partly because Brighton was making its own excitement through men such as Sir Harry Preston, who ran the Royal York Hotel and later its neighbour, the Royal Albion.

It was Preston who had persuaded the council to pave Madeira Drive and make it a racetrack for pioneer motorists, an initiative that was hugely successful.

Not only did thousands of people attend the races, which are still held each September, but many of them also found they could easily drive from London to the nearest point on the South Coast.

Preston was keenly interested in the early aviators and was bold enough to share a flight with some of them.

He was helped by the fact that Britain’s first airport at Shoreham was only seven miles away and airmen could be persuaded to fly to Brighton, even landing on the beach.

Literature was not forgotten as Preston offered Arnold Bennett a hotel room in which to write Clayhanger, one of his most famous novels, about life in the Potteries almost 200 miles away. Despite that, several characters were based on people he had met in Brighton.

Preston also had the biggest and best motor yacht, which turned heads whenever he brought it from Shoreham into Brighton.

The Palace Pier, then still new, was augmented by the addition of a theatre at the sea end and a winter garden, while the West Pier, with an earlier theatre, continued to prosper.

Among the regular visitors to Brighton was the painter Walter Sickert, who had a studio in Sussex Square. The art gallery made a good move in buying his Cab Yard At Night for £40.

But his best-known painting of Brighton is Pierrots, showing entertainers on one of the piers in a riot of colourful costumes.

Brighton had been linked by train to London since 1841 but the introduction of the speedy Southern Belle encouraged more people to make the journey to the coast.

Fares were so reasonable that even those who were not well off came down. For thousands, their first glimpse of the sea was at Brighton.

Most working-class people by the sea were no richer and there was widespread poverty, but some progress was made in meeting their needs such as the introduction of council housing in roads off Elm Grove.

There were a few warning signs of what lay ahead. A French plane landed on Brighton beach having crossed the Channel, making Britain less of an island.

Military exercises showed how quickly troops could be mustered in case of emergency.

Less than a year later, the First World War broke out. Brighton and Britain were never to be the same again.