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Dungeness, a village probably best known for its nuclear power station, has been ranked alongside Paris, Venice and Zanzibar on a list of the world's last truly "authentic" places to visit.

Consisting of 80 or so "shacks" - mostly former railway carriages first set up as holiday chalets in the 1920s - the once popular resort is home to an unlikely mix of workers from the nearby nuclear power plant, a handful of artists and those wishing to escape the bustle of London just an hour and a half away.

It was here that the avant garde painter and film-maker Derek Jarman set up the unique garden where he spent the years before his death in 1994, growing flowers through the shingle among debris he gathered from the beach.

It was the place's "beautiful rugged" coast and "sublime empty skies" which persuaded the philosopher Alain de Botton to select Dungeness for inclusion in a list of the 50 most authentic places for British Airways's High Life magazine.

The compilation also includes Ramsgate and Deal, the latter praised for its "raffish and bohemian" mix.