*FOYLES NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE MONTH* 'I really can't recommend this
enough - especially if you are going on holiday' Tom Holland
'Delightful ... Lucy Lethbridge has written a glorious romp of a book'
Kathryn Hughes, The Mail on Sunday 'It is the paramount wish of every
English heart, ever addicted to vagabondizing, to hasten to the
Continent…' In 1815 the Battle of Waterloo brought to an end the
Napoleonic Wars and the European continent opened up once again to
British tourists. The nineteenth century was to be an age driven by
steam technology, mass-industrialisation and movement, and, in the
footsteps of the Grand Tourists a hundred years earlier, the British
middle-classes flocked to Europe to see the sights. In Tourists, the
voices of these travellers – puzzled, shocked, delighted and amazed
– are brought vividly to life. From the discomfort of the stagecoach
to the 'self-contained pleasure palace' of the beach resort, Lucy
Lethbridge brilliantly examines two centuries of tourists' experience.
Among a range of disparate characters, we meet the commercial titans
of Victorian tourism, Albert Smith, Henry Gaze and Thomas Cook, as
well as their successor, Vladimir Raitz, the creator of the modern
beach holiday. The growth of popular tourism introduced new markets in
guidebooks, souvenirs, cuisine and health cures. It smoothed over
class differences but also exacerbated them. It destroyed traditional
cultures while at the same time preserving them. From portable cameras
to postcards and suntans, Tourists explores how tourism has reflected
changing attitudes to modernity and how, from the grand hotel to the
campsite, the foreign holiday exposes deep fears, hopes and even
longings for home.
Les mer
How the British Went Abroad to Find Themselves
Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9781408856215
Publisert
2022
Utgave
1. utgave
Utgiver
Vendor
Bloomsbury Publishing
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter