Portal:West Sussex

View of the South Downs from Devil's Dyke

The South Downs National Park is England's newest national park, designated on 31 March 2010. The park, covering an area of 1,627 square kilometres (628 sq mi) in southern England, stretches for 140 kilometres (87 mi) from Winchester in the west to Eastbourne in the east through the counties of Hampshire, West Sussex and East Sussex. The national park covers the chalk hills of the South Downs (which on the English Channel coast form the white cliffs of the Seven Sisters and Beachy Head) and a substantial part of a separate physiographic region, the western Weald, with its heavily wooded sandstone and clay hills and vales. The South Downs Way spans the entire length of the park and is the only National Trail that lies wholly within a national park. (Full article...)

Michael John Elphick (19 September 1946 – 7 September 2002) was an English film and television actor. He played the eponymous private investigator in the ITV series Boon and Harry Slater in BBC's EastEnders. He was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in the 1983 film Gorky Park.

In his prime, Elphick always looked older than he was, and with his gruff Sussex accent and lip-curling sneer he often played menacing hard men.

Elphick struggled with an addiction to alcohol; at the height of his problem, he admitted to consuming two litres of spirits a day, which contributed to his death from a heart attack in 2002. (Full article...)

• Sussex
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• UK geography

Current news may be found on the BBC web pages for Sussex.