With the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, Europe opened up once again to Britain and the middle classes flocked to the Continent. But what would they make of Vesuvius or the Alps, let alone their first encounters with pizzas and duvets ? Drawing on diaries and first-hand accounts, Lucy Lethbridge perceptively charts the story of British tourism from the commercial titans of the Victorian era to the beach holidays of the 1970s.
From the significance of souvenirs and suntans to class, traditions and the irony that tourism so often destroys what it seeks, Tourists is a brilliant work of social history.
With the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, Europe opened up once again to Britain and the middle classes flocked to the Continent. But what would they make of Vesuvius or the Alps, let alone their first encounters with pizzas and duvets ? Drawing on diaries and first-hand accounts, Lucy Lethbridge perceptively charts the story of British tourism from the commercial titans of the Victorian era to the beach holidays of the 1970s.
From the significance of souvenirs and suntans to class, traditions and the irony that tourism so often destroys what it seeks, Tourists is a brilliant work of social history.