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Holidays and High Society: The Golden Age of Travel
In the nineteenth century, the phenomenon of 'going abroad' was born. Beautiful Mediterranean towns, luxurious spas of Mittel-Europe and the golf courses of France became the playground of the idle wealthy. Until foreign travel became more accessible, the picturesque towns and smart hotels catered to an elite mix of royalty, celebrities and high society. This was where society could relax, mingle, see and be seen - where rules could be bent and broken and routines forgotten.
Drawing Mary Evans Picture Library's archives, Lucinda Gosling traces the growth of some of Europe’s most exclusive and desirable holiday destinations from Monte Carlo to Maidenhead, Biarritz to St Moritz, and explores the lives of the privileged holidaymakers who travelled there. Revealing a world of gossip and glamour, Holidays and High Society tells the story of travel in a golden age through its fashions, faces and places, using evocative vintage travel posters, brochures, fashion spreads and more: the ultimate form of escapism for anyone with a passion for the past.
Drawing Mary Evans Picture Library's archives, Lucinda Gosling traces the growth of some of Europe’s most exclusive and desirable holiday destinations from Monte Carlo to Maidenhead, Biarritz to St Moritz, and explores the lives of the privileged holidaymakers who travelled there. Revealing a world of gossip and glamour, Holidays and High Society tells the story of travel in a golden age through its fashions, faces and places, using evocative vintage travel posters, brochures, fashion spreads and more: the ultimate form of escapism for anyone with a passion for the past.
- GenresHistory
192 pages, Paperback
Published June 3, 2019
20 people want to read
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February 13, 2025
Leisure travel was, not so long ago, the province of the very rich. Who else could afford to take a couple months off work (if you had to work at all) to take a steamship to the Antipodes (a.k.a Australia), play with roos for a few weeks, then sail back to whatever cold and damp place you came from?
Having both the time and the folding allowed the steamer set to not only visit established tourist sites, but to also create new destinations out of fishing villages and mountainside way-stations. Of course, once the plutocracy's presence had transformed these places into unrecognizable playgrounds, and the proletariat started using the new roads/ports/railroads the upper crust's travel created, the 1% moved on to create new, exclusive destinations for themselves elsewhere.
This, in a nutshell, is what Holidays and High Society is all about.
This slim book -- 160 pages, with tons of pictures -- looks at this process as it happened in eight mostly European travel hotspots in the last quarter of the 19th century and the first quarter of the 20th. Privileged British tourists were the drivers of change for seven of the eight locations (Germans got Baden Baden started). If you've read anything about the aristocracy at play in those fifty years straddling the turn of the 20th century, none of the places included in the book will surprise you in the least.
The author writes in a clear, confidential style that goes down easy. She drops names (so many names!) regularly and with great aplomb. Reading this is like sitting down for tea at Claridge's with a well-traveled, well-connected pal who just has to share all the juicy titbits she just learned about the French Riviera or Deauville or St. Moritz. Is it good reading? Yes. Will you get to peek behind the curtains at the lifestyles of the rich and (formerly) famous? Of course. Will you be able to base the master's thesis for your hospitality management studies on it? Not a chance. That's not what it's for.
Each story runs roughly the same way: a hamlet or collection of hamlets exists in sleepy obscurity until some titled Brit stumbles into the place, builds a villa, and invites all his rich friends to visit for a few weeks at the best time of year. Soon the hamlets are gone, replaced by lavish hotels, spas, and casinos. The former fisherfolk come to make their livings towing waterskiers, changing sheets in those hotels, or selling souvenirs. The foreign visitors live high, misbehave outrageously, and spend obscenely. Musicians, artists, and other hangers-on roll in. Then the plebes on their package holidays (or, worse, the Americans) crash the party, World War II finishes off the last of the glamor, and the fancy people go to play elsewhere.
The illustrations are the real draw of this book. Vintage photographs, travel posters, and artwork leap out at you from nearly every page. The posters and magazine adverts are printed in glorious full color and are exemplars of the golden age of advertising art. No wonder everyone wanted to go to these places with pictures like these luring them in.
Why only three stars? The repetitiveness of the chapters is one reason; the lack of an index is another. There aren't many dates or even years mentioned to help us keep track of the passage of time. There's usually not much said about the social, political, or economic context for these islands of privilege, nor do we hear about the effects of these places' radical redevelopment on the people who lived and worked in them. I for one would've liked to hear about the impact on Venice Lido tourism when the Fascists came to power in Italy, but that's just me. (At least the author mentioned how Nazism changed Baden Baden's atmosphere.)
Ultimately, Holidays and High Society is a book to be perused, not studied. The gorgeous pictures and the racy tales of rich, titled men and bathing beauties are the whole point. I bought my copy in a bookshop in the Riviera's Beaulieu-sur-Mer a few blocks from the Med, the perfect place to find it. Had I been inclined, I could've taken it straight to the beach, read a bit, squinted hard, and imagined I was sunbathing with Coco Chanel, the Fitzgeralds, the Churchills, and all the rest of the cast. That's what this book is for, and that could be just fine.
Having both the time and the folding allowed the steamer set to not only visit established tourist sites, but to also create new destinations out of fishing villages and mountainside way-stations. Of course, once the plutocracy's presence had transformed these places into unrecognizable playgrounds, and the proletariat started using the new roads/ports/railroads the upper crust's travel created, the 1% moved on to create new, exclusive destinations for themselves elsewhere.
This, in a nutshell, is what Holidays and High Society is all about.
This slim book -- 160 pages, with tons of pictures -- looks at this process as it happened in eight mostly European travel hotspots in the last quarter of the 19th century and the first quarter of the 20th. Privileged British tourists were the drivers of change for seven of the eight locations (Germans got Baden Baden started). If you've read anything about the aristocracy at play in those fifty years straddling the turn of the 20th century, none of the places included in the book will surprise you in the least.
The author writes in a clear, confidential style that goes down easy. She drops names (so many names!) regularly and with great aplomb. Reading this is like sitting down for tea at Claridge's with a well-traveled, well-connected pal who just has to share all the juicy titbits she just learned about the French Riviera or Deauville or St. Moritz. Is it good reading? Yes. Will you get to peek behind the curtains at the lifestyles of the rich and (formerly) famous? Of course. Will you be able to base the master's thesis for your hospitality management studies on it? Not a chance. That's not what it's for.
Each story runs roughly the same way: a hamlet or collection of hamlets exists in sleepy obscurity until some titled Brit stumbles into the place, builds a villa, and invites all his rich friends to visit for a few weeks at the best time of year. Soon the hamlets are gone, replaced by lavish hotels, spas, and casinos. The former fisherfolk come to make their livings towing waterskiers, changing sheets in those hotels, or selling souvenirs. The foreign visitors live high, misbehave outrageously, and spend obscenely. Musicians, artists, and other hangers-on roll in. Then the plebes on their package holidays (or, worse, the Americans) crash the party, World War II finishes off the last of the glamor, and the fancy people go to play elsewhere.
The illustrations are the real draw of this book. Vintage photographs, travel posters, and artwork leap out at you from nearly every page. The posters and magazine adverts are printed in glorious full color and are exemplars of the golden age of advertising art. No wonder everyone wanted to go to these places with pictures like these luring them in.
Why only three stars? The repetitiveness of the chapters is one reason; the lack of an index is another. There aren't many dates or even years mentioned to help us keep track of the passage of time. There's usually not much said about the social, political, or economic context for these islands of privilege, nor do we hear about the effects of these places' radical redevelopment on the people who lived and worked in them. I for one would've liked to hear about the impact on Venice Lido tourism when the Fascists came to power in Italy, but that's just me. (At least the author mentioned how Nazism changed Baden Baden's atmosphere.)
Ultimately, Holidays and High Society is a book to be perused, not studied. The gorgeous pictures and the racy tales of rich, titled men and bathing beauties are the whole point. I bought my copy in a bookshop in the Riviera's Beaulieu-sur-Mer a few blocks from the Med, the perfect place to find it. Had I been inclined, I could've taken it straight to the beach, read a bit, squinted hard, and imagined I was sunbathing with Coco Chanel, the Fitzgeralds, the Churchills, and all the rest of the cast. That's what this book is for, and that could be just fine.
November 26, 2020
Interesting to see how the wealthy had to distinguish themselves from the masses and their mode of entertainment. Fascinating that a concept which only took a foothold in between the two world wars - sun tanning - retains such a hold in our psyche that now we spend buckets of cash to fake the tan. Crazy. Also interesting how "tight" England and Germany were. Interesting and sometimes lovely illustrations.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews