Cream Teas, Traffic Jams and Sunburn: The Great British Holiday Book

The British on holiday: how can four simple words evoke so many vivid images images of raw sunburn and relentless rain of John Bull's Pub (in Lanzarote) and Antonio's Tapas Bar (in Torquay) of endless queues to get through security at Manchester Airport or Gatwick or Glasgow or Luton and endless tailbacks on the M5 or M6 or M25 but also images of carefree sploshing in Portuguese swimming-pools and lazy lunches in the Provencal sun? In this funny acutely observed and engaging social history Brian Viner celebrates the holidaying British with their quirks and their quinine tablets and their blithe assumption that the elderly man selling oranges at the roadside in Corfu so photogenic with his walnut face and three teeth must surely understand just a few uncomplicated English sentences. He examines the fortnight-long cruise at one end of the holiday spectrum and a day's rambling in the Lake District at the other. He looks at how the holidaying British evolved into the big-spending many-headed beast we know today by recalling not only the holidays that we took as children but the holidays our grandparents and their grandparents took.It is a story that connects Blackpool with Barcelona Mauritius with Margate. It is a story indeed that connects us all.Read More