What do you think?
Rate this book
Tourists: How the British Went Abroad to Find Themselves
'Full of human interest and fresh insights, Tourists offers a wonderfully enjoyable account of one of the defining phenomena of the past two centuries.' David Kynaston
‘It is the paramount wish of every English heart, ever addicted to vagabondizing, to hasten to the Continent…’
In the early 1800s, a new social phenomenon was born in Britain. The exploration of Europe, previously the preserve of the wealthy and aristocratic, began to be taken up by the British middle classes. The era of the lofty Grand Tour was over; here instead was the advent of tourism as we know it today.
In Tourists, Lucy Lethbridge brings the voices of ordinary British travellers vividly to life. She charts the rise of guidebooks, explores the connection between tourism and mass production and shines a light on the evolving public attitudes towards leisure. Sweeping in its scope, extensively researched and brilliantly observed, Tourists is an original and fascinating portrait of Brits abroad, with all their foibles and eccentricities. It spans two centuries of British experiences of travel: from the allure of Spanish seaside holidays to the alarming nature of foreign food, from the appetite for architecture and art to the drama of finding a proper cup of tea.
Written with warmth and wit, Tourists serves as a reminder of the long, sometimes comic, always complex relationship between the British and their holiday destinations.
‘It is the paramount wish of every English heart, ever addicted to vagabondizing, to hasten to the Continent…’
In the early 1800s, a new social phenomenon was born in Britain. The exploration of Europe, previously the preserve of the wealthy and aristocratic, began to be taken up by the British middle classes. The era of the lofty Grand Tour was over; here instead was the advent of tourism as we know it today.
In Tourists, Lucy Lethbridge brings the voices of ordinary British travellers vividly to life. She charts the rise of guidebooks, explores the connection between tourism and mass production and shines a light on the evolving public attitudes towards leisure. Sweeping in its scope, extensively researched and brilliantly observed, Tourists is an original and fascinating portrait of Brits abroad, with all their foibles and eccentricities. It spans two centuries of British experiences of travel: from the allure of Spanish seaside holidays to the alarming nature of foreign food, from the appetite for architecture and art to the drama of finding a proper cup of tea.
Written with warmth and wit, Tourists serves as a reminder of the long, sometimes comic, always complex relationship between the British and their holiday destinations.
362 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 18, 2022
50 people are currently reading
624 people want to read
About the author
Lucy Lethbridge
18 books21 followersLucy Lethbridge has written numerous books, as well as writing articles for the Observer, the Sunday Telegraph, the Independent on Sunday, the Times Literary Supplement, Art News, and Art+Auction. She lives in London.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews
September 26, 2022
I heard about this book from an episode of the podcast "The Rest is History." As an avid traveler, I found the insights into the history of tourism and tourism's place in history fascinating.
September 21, 2023
For centuries, tourism was an upper-class pursuit. The grand tour was an opportunity to travel the world (or at least Europe) and to bring back bits of ancient civilisation to add talking points to the ancestral home. With the industrial revolution, however, a new monied class began to leave our shores, much to the chagrin of their presumed betters, and worse to find new ways to enjoy themselves. Lucy Lethbridge’s Tourists explores the evolution of these travels, the impact on the destinations, the fads and crazes it inspired and the way it changed how we looked at our neighbours.
The trouble with a subject as broad as travel is that it’s difficult to apply structure. A simple linear history would potentially be baffling, as topics come into vogue, bubble along unmentioned and unchanging for centuries, before suddenly fizzling out or mutating into something entirely different. A thematic approach is equally challenging as some subjects would be hard to relate to each other and there would be a significant variation in the amount that could be said of one compared to another. Lethbridge attempts to square this circle by broadly working forwards but exploring themes as they arise – so, for example, the history of caravanning is presented when its horse-drawn antecedent becomes popular and then quickly progressed to its modern motorised successor.
Unfortunately, this approach seems only partially successful. We see, for example, the rise of the British seaside holiday (an odd choice given that the byline of the book suggests the book is about foreign holidays), but once the issue of how the suntan went from being a sign of being working class to being a health craze and back to a health threat has been covered, the subject is simply dropped.
The thematic unity is also somewhat flimsy. One minute we’re talking about snow-globes and the next a potted history of photography. Arguably, these are both souvenirs, but the way they are presented it feels as if they are just randomly thrown together. Some things, like the creation of the Letts diary, seem almost unrelated to holidays entirely – although they do give the author a supply of quotes, largely concentrated in that one chapter.
The upshot of the book’s issues mean that whilst there’s a lot of interesting information to be found in these pages, it isn’t presented in a manner which has any sort of flow or consistency. Some subjects are presented in a moderate amount of detail, others only in passing. Some subjects aren’t covered at all – I kept waiting to see if the oft-mentioned Polytechnic Association would become Lunn Poly (a subsequent glance at Wikipedia shows that it did) but it never came up, much less the odd period of its history when it was nationalised by the UK government.
Stylistically, the book also struggles. Sometimes it feels like a social commentary – the snobbery of upper-class travellers toward mere tourists being a recurrent theme in earlier chapters – whereas at other times it feels like the author wants to be more technical – one feels the relationship between photography and holiday snaps could be handled without an explanation of daguerreotypes, especially when the author loses interest in photography after the launch of Kodak in 1888.
Ultimately, the book doesn’t feel like a book. Instead, it gives the impression that it is a collection of short essays masquerading as a book. It’s not terrible, but it is somewhat unsatisfying. Perhaps those with more than a passing interest in any particular aspect of the tourist experience would be better looking at more specific histories.
The trouble with a subject as broad as travel is that it’s difficult to apply structure. A simple linear history would potentially be baffling, as topics come into vogue, bubble along unmentioned and unchanging for centuries, before suddenly fizzling out or mutating into something entirely different. A thematic approach is equally challenging as some subjects would be hard to relate to each other and there would be a significant variation in the amount that could be said of one compared to another. Lethbridge attempts to square this circle by broadly working forwards but exploring themes as they arise – so, for example, the history of caravanning is presented when its horse-drawn antecedent becomes popular and then quickly progressed to its modern motorised successor.
Unfortunately, this approach seems only partially successful. We see, for example, the rise of the British seaside holiday (an odd choice given that the byline of the book suggests the book is about foreign holidays), but once the issue of how the suntan went from being a sign of being working class to being a health craze and back to a health threat has been covered, the subject is simply dropped.
The thematic unity is also somewhat flimsy. One minute we’re talking about snow-globes and the next a potted history of photography. Arguably, these are both souvenirs, but the way they are presented it feels as if they are just randomly thrown together. Some things, like the creation of the Letts diary, seem almost unrelated to holidays entirely – although they do give the author a supply of quotes, largely concentrated in that one chapter.
The upshot of the book’s issues mean that whilst there’s a lot of interesting information to be found in these pages, it isn’t presented in a manner which has any sort of flow or consistency. Some subjects are presented in a moderate amount of detail, others only in passing. Some subjects aren’t covered at all – I kept waiting to see if the oft-mentioned Polytechnic Association would become Lunn Poly (a subsequent glance at Wikipedia shows that it did) but it never came up, much less the odd period of its history when it was nationalised by the UK government.
Stylistically, the book also struggles. Sometimes it feels like a social commentary – the snobbery of upper-class travellers toward mere tourists being a recurrent theme in earlier chapters – whereas at other times it feels like the author wants to be more technical – one feels the relationship between photography and holiday snaps could be handled without an explanation of daguerreotypes, especially when the author loses interest in photography after the launch of Kodak in 1888.
Ultimately, the book doesn’t feel like a book. Instead, it gives the impression that it is a collection of short essays masquerading as a book. It’s not terrible, but it is somewhat unsatisfying. Perhaps those with more than a passing interest in any particular aspect of the tourist experience would be better looking at more specific histories.
December 20, 2022
Bought this on the back of a very entertaining episode of 'The Rest Is History' podcast. The subject is absolutely fascinating but after a strong first third of the book, it becomes a bit of a slog as their is no overarching story, and the dates and sources and numbers begin to become a bit dull. Listen to the podcast, but the book is only for those that are very keenly interested in what British tourists were doing on their continental holidays between 1800 and 1950.
December 2, 2024
This was great!
November 15, 2025
I enjoyed the history of travel and tourism. However, the latter chapters were boring and uninteresting.
February 21, 2025
Like many others came to this book through The Rest is History and found the first quarter or so very interesting. But while the information is well researched and drawn from a good range of sources the rest of the book was a trudge to read and I started skipping sections to finish.
September 17, 2024
Lucy Lethhbridge’s account of two hundred years of British foreign tourism is entertaining, often surprising and frequently revealing about aspects of British culture beyond its ostensible remit. Bearing the evidence of extensive research among a vast range of archives (including many unpublished personal accounts) Lethbridge focuses on individual experiences of foreign - mainly European - travel and the social, economic and cultural forces that drove it and which were in turn shaped by it. Despite anxiety about food, customs, hygiene, language and other travellers, the British urge to travel on the continent was strong and only ever stymied by world wars.
September 10, 2022
A fascinating, entertaining, and well researched social history of tourism. I learned a lot and I was fascinated by what i read.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine
November 25, 2023
3.5*
I have never been more delighted by a travel section in a bookstore than the one in Hatchard’s. If I lived in London and was going to make a big trip somewhere — like Delhi in 2024, or somewhere to celebrate a girlfriend’s 30th, or a hot girl summer in Naples with my sister — I would swing by Hatchard’s after work or on the weekend, and pick out 1-2 books for an intellectual journey before the actual physical one.
Tourists is full of delightful trivia about the development of the tourist industry in Britain. We learn about the original travel agencies, the dissolution and entrenchment of class differences, the boom of tourism with the development of the railway system, the undoubted influence of British tourists on the hospitality industry in Western Europe, a search for cures in the water/ mountain/ sea, the development of camping, war tourism in Waterloo, fantasies and romanticism of places — ending wiht the development of the airline industry and the July/ August sun seekers in the French Riveria. In the antics of the past you see echoes of the presence, like people’s insistence in doing “authentic tourism” and looking down at less courteous behaviour.
My main gripe with the book is the lack of a strong structure. There are delightful bits of trivia but it’s lost in loosely sectioned paragraphs. The book feels chronological but there are repeating themes, like wellness cures and photography. And if chronological — the author didn’t forcefully move the reader through time enough. Overall it made for a weak reading experience for me, from the first to the last chapter, while taking the PATH or wolfing down lunch in Jersey.
Excerpts:
It was Cook’s insight that the group actually delighted in itself as a definable group. Here is the voice of a radical branch of mid-Victorian middle-class England: it doesn’t pull rank, it dislikes patronage, it chafes at being left out of the pleasures and education of the elite; it is convivial and celebrates collective experience. The snobs are the ones with limitations.
Because there were so many competing railway companies, the fares and timetables were off-puttingly complicated. What is more, how do you find a hotel in London if you have never been to the capital before? The answer was a package tour in which, for a single payment, Thomas Cook would look after the traveller. He offered the excitement of new experiences soothed by the reassuring mantle of paternal familiarity. Cook may have been (for the most part affectionately) nicknamed "The General' by his excursionists but what he offered was security.
From Nice, in 1857, Margaret Maria Brewster wrote that ‘there are English libraries, and English newspapers, and English shops – billiard rooms – good table’d’hôtes, plenty of society – quantities of gossip, and a great deal of “dressiness” ’. In Menton (in Italian, Mentone), the most popular southern resort for the British, there was a grocer called Willoughby who supplied familiar provisions to wintering consumptives. As Thackeray observed in Vanity Fair: ‘Those who know the English colonies abroad know that we carry with us our pride, pills, prejudices, Harvey-sauces, cayenne-peppers, and other wares, making a little Britain wherever we settle down.’ The change of scene had very quickly begun to look like the home from home.
An emu's egg, for example, might represent New Zealand, and a Colt firearm the western frontier-lands of North America. The conjuring of a place through a single image was to become a crucial component of the emerging business of popular travel, a sort of reassuringly predictable shorthand for not only the adventure of abroad but also its commercial potential.
Tom, like many diarists, included little watercolour sketches in the pages of his journal. Again, there is a pre-packaged feeling about his responses to what he sees and his pictures show the influence of the commercialised images of Egypt and the Middle East that were popular at the time. One of Tom’s drawings, for example, shows two camels and a single palm tree in front of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Visiting during the same period as the Beswicks was the former scenery painter David Roberts, who was to become one of the most prolific and celebrated orientalist image-makers, but Tom’s aesthetic owes more to the rules of the picturesque aesthetic laid out fifty years before. This was how tourists imagined the scene would look and how they hoped to record it to bring home: a palm beautifully positioned in front of a pyramid was Egypt in a nutshell.
It is a common conviction of all travellers that they are in a race to see the great sights of the world in their authentic, untouched state before they disappear.
The encroachment of a feature that was soon to dominate coastal villages all over the Mediterranean: the dispiriting, damp melancholy of the off-season holiday home. In Palma, El Terreno was a ‘strip of holiday houses reaching westward along the coast’. The English rented these villas in the winter, the Spanish in the summer. ‘It is a quarter quite singularly unattractive . . . there is something extremely painful about Mediterranean holiday houses. They have a uniform air of being built of stucco and white cardboard, and they attempt to look as sumptuous as they succeed in looking collapsible.’
Something ‘real’ was being swamped by its own shadow – unreal tat simulating real craftsmanship: fake ‘gypsies’ playing flamenco in bars and ‘bullfighting posters on which tourists could have their own names printed between those of El Litri and Jaime Ostos’. Like attitudes to Cook’s tourists in the nineteenth century, Graves saw ‘real’ Majorca collapsing under the weight of the incoming crowd, with its chatter, its megaphones and its loud motor vehicles.
“Leisure in a poor man is thought quite a different thing from what it is to a rich man, and goes by a different name. In the poor it is called idleness, the cause of all mischief.”
“There is a feeling of something lacking that prevents one looking at the scene with that perfect sense of satisfaction born of the knowledge that we are gazing at the most beautiful sight we have ever seen. The blood does not tingle and run through frames with that exquisite sense of happiness which is next of kin to pain at sight of something wonderfully lovely. So we were disappointed with the valley of Orotava.”
“I find that when people begin talking or writing about Italy they naturally and necessarily talk or write a heap of transcendent nonsense about art and that sort of thing.”
A tan was the product of wholesome outdoors labour. It was now ‘sun-kissed’ rather than ‘sunburnt’. […] Paleness came also to be associated with the transparent skin pallor that indicated tuberculosis; it was the colour of the sickbed. It was also increasingly seen as the colour of an effete and degenerate aristocracy, rotten and drained of vigour. […] Two schools of thought on the nature of female beauty were emerging: a pale face suggested sheltered, ladylike, appropriately timid characteristics; a tanned one was vigorous, healthy and robust.
Fashion responded to the ‘sun craze’ with holiday garments that were easily slipped on and off for maximum exposure. The Art Deco motif of the sun appears everywhere in the graphics and designs of the period, sparked by the ‘Egypt craze’ that followed the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922. […] In 1958, in a talk called ‘The Sun Seekers’ [Robert Graves] summoned up an imaginary ‘pretty typist’ ‘stretched out like a plump white plaice on the grill, trying to collect a tan worthy of that tremendous solar male’. As something of a sun-cultist himself, he deplored the way that it had seeped into popular culture and there been cheapened by mere self-indulgence. It ruined the view for everyone. ‘The average emancipated Englishwoman associates the Sun with an idyll of lying scantily clad on a nice hot sandy beach, while a bronzed lover – and incarnation of the Sun – mutters fiery and unintelligible endearments in her chaste ear. Probably she has been reading that crazy D. H. Lawrence, England’s most fanatical Sun-cult revivalist.”
I have never been more delighted by a travel section in a bookstore than the one in Hatchard’s. If I lived in London and was going to make a big trip somewhere — like Delhi in 2024, or somewhere to celebrate a girlfriend’s 30th, or a hot girl summer in Naples with my sister — I would swing by Hatchard’s after work or on the weekend, and pick out 1-2 books for an intellectual journey before the actual physical one.
Tourists is full of delightful trivia about the development of the tourist industry in Britain. We learn about the original travel agencies, the dissolution and entrenchment of class differences, the boom of tourism with the development of the railway system, the undoubted influence of British tourists on the hospitality industry in Western Europe, a search for cures in the water/ mountain/ sea, the development of camping, war tourism in Waterloo, fantasies and romanticism of places — ending wiht the development of the airline industry and the July/ August sun seekers in the French Riveria. In the antics of the past you see echoes of the presence, like people’s insistence in doing “authentic tourism” and looking down at less courteous behaviour.
My main gripe with the book is the lack of a strong structure. There are delightful bits of trivia but it’s lost in loosely sectioned paragraphs. The book feels chronological but there are repeating themes, like wellness cures and photography. And if chronological — the author didn’t forcefully move the reader through time enough. Overall it made for a weak reading experience for me, from the first to the last chapter, while taking the PATH or wolfing down lunch in Jersey.
Excerpts:
It was Cook’s insight that the group actually delighted in itself as a definable group. Here is the voice of a radical branch of mid-Victorian middle-class England: it doesn’t pull rank, it dislikes patronage, it chafes at being left out of the pleasures and education of the elite; it is convivial and celebrates collective experience. The snobs are the ones with limitations.
Because there were so many competing railway companies, the fares and timetables were off-puttingly complicated. What is more, how do you find a hotel in London if you have never been to the capital before? The answer was a package tour in which, for a single payment, Thomas Cook would look after the traveller. He offered the excitement of new experiences soothed by the reassuring mantle of paternal familiarity. Cook may have been (for the most part affectionately) nicknamed "The General' by his excursionists but what he offered was security.
From Nice, in 1857, Margaret Maria Brewster wrote that ‘there are English libraries, and English newspapers, and English shops – billiard rooms – good table’d’hôtes, plenty of society – quantities of gossip, and a great deal of “dressiness” ’. In Menton (in Italian, Mentone), the most popular southern resort for the British, there was a grocer called Willoughby who supplied familiar provisions to wintering consumptives. As Thackeray observed in Vanity Fair: ‘Those who know the English colonies abroad know that we carry with us our pride, pills, prejudices, Harvey-sauces, cayenne-peppers, and other wares, making a little Britain wherever we settle down.’ The change of scene had very quickly begun to look like the home from home.
An emu's egg, for example, might represent New Zealand, and a Colt firearm the western frontier-lands of North America. The conjuring of a place through a single image was to become a crucial component of the emerging business of popular travel, a sort of reassuringly predictable shorthand for not only the adventure of abroad but also its commercial potential.
Tom, like many diarists, included little watercolour sketches in the pages of his journal. Again, there is a pre-packaged feeling about his responses to what he sees and his pictures show the influence of the commercialised images of Egypt and the Middle East that were popular at the time. One of Tom’s drawings, for example, shows two camels and a single palm tree in front of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Visiting during the same period as the Beswicks was the former scenery painter David Roberts, who was to become one of the most prolific and celebrated orientalist image-makers, but Tom’s aesthetic owes more to the rules of the picturesque aesthetic laid out fifty years before. This was how tourists imagined the scene would look and how they hoped to record it to bring home: a palm beautifully positioned in front of a pyramid was Egypt in a nutshell.
It is a common conviction of all travellers that they are in a race to see the great sights of the world in their authentic, untouched state before they disappear.
The encroachment of a feature that was soon to dominate coastal villages all over the Mediterranean: the dispiriting, damp melancholy of the off-season holiday home. In Palma, El Terreno was a ‘strip of holiday houses reaching westward along the coast’. The English rented these villas in the winter, the Spanish in the summer. ‘It is a quarter quite singularly unattractive . . . there is something extremely painful about Mediterranean holiday houses. They have a uniform air of being built of stucco and white cardboard, and they attempt to look as sumptuous as they succeed in looking collapsible.’
Something ‘real’ was being swamped by its own shadow – unreal tat simulating real craftsmanship: fake ‘gypsies’ playing flamenco in bars and ‘bullfighting posters on which tourists could have their own names printed between those of El Litri and Jaime Ostos’. Like attitudes to Cook’s tourists in the nineteenth century, Graves saw ‘real’ Majorca collapsing under the weight of the incoming crowd, with its chatter, its megaphones and its loud motor vehicles.
“Leisure in a poor man is thought quite a different thing from what it is to a rich man, and goes by a different name. In the poor it is called idleness, the cause of all mischief.”
“There is a feeling of something lacking that prevents one looking at the scene with that perfect sense of satisfaction born of the knowledge that we are gazing at the most beautiful sight we have ever seen. The blood does not tingle and run through frames with that exquisite sense of happiness which is next of kin to pain at sight of something wonderfully lovely. So we were disappointed with the valley of Orotava.”
“I find that when people begin talking or writing about Italy they naturally and necessarily talk or write a heap of transcendent nonsense about art and that sort of thing.”
A tan was the product of wholesome outdoors labour. It was now ‘sun-kissed’ rather than ‘sunburnt’. […] Paleness came also to be associated with the transparent skin pallor that indicated tuberculosis; it was the colour of the sickbed. It was also increasingly seen as the colour of an effete and degenerate aristocracy, rotten and drained of vigour. […] Two schools of thought on the nature of female beauty were emerging: a pale face suggested sheltered, ladylike, appropriately timid characteristics; a tanned one was vigorous, healthy and robust.
Fashion responded to the ‘sun craze’ with holiday garments that were easily slipped on and off for maximum exposure. The Art Deco motif of the sun appears everywhere in the graphics and designs of the period, sparked by the ‘Egypt craze’ that followed the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922. […] In 1958, in a talk called ‘The Sun Seekers’ [Robert Graves] summoned up an imaginary ‘pretty typist’ ‘stretched out like a plump white plaice on the grill, trying to collect a tan worthy of that tremendous solar male’. As something of a sun-cultist himself, he deplored the way that it had seeped into popular culture and there been cheapened by mere self-indulgence. It ruined the view for everyone. ‘The average emancipated Englishwoman associates the Sun with an idyll of lying scantily clad on a nice hot sandy beach, while a bronzed lover – and incarnation of the Sun – mutters fiery and unintelligible endearments in her chaste ear. Probably she has been reading that crazy D. H. Lawrence, England’s most fanatical Sun-cult revivalist.”
September 17, 2024
A fun history packed with quotes from contemporary sources, with some great bits on incredibly popular 19th century "virtual" tourism like panoramas, diorama, and (essentially) immersive theatre. Definitely worth reading.
Two minor notes:
* Lethbridge is a very funny writer at times, but when combined with her often highly elliptical sentences, I sometimes lost track of what she was talking about.
* Probably could've done with 20-30% fewer quotes in most cases.
Two minor notes:
* Lethbridge is a very funny writer at times, but when combined with her often highly elliptical sentences, I sometimes lost track of what she was talking about.
* Probably could've done with 20-30% fewer quotes in most cases.
October 10, 2022
This became too much of a good thing.
The subject is interesting, but the author went off-piste too much for my liking. Yes, the British went to European spas a lot in the nineteenth century - but not enough to justify a fifth of the entire book, much of which section is devoted to the spas generally, rather than to the British experience of them.
There is a lot of fun stuff here: but also a lot of what seemed like padding, which defeated me in the end.
The subject is interesting, but the author went off-piste too much for my liking. Yes, the British went to European spas a lot in the nineteenth century - but not enough to justify a fifth of the entire book, much of which section is devoted to the spas generally, rather than to the British experience of them.
There is a lot of fun stuff here: but also a lot of what seemed like padding, which defeated me in the end.
October 11, 2023
Like other reviewers, I found my way to this book via 'The Rest is History' podcast. It is good, but the podcast did a much better job of mining the humour from these stories.
August 27, 2022
This was a brilliant and very fascinating insight into tourism in history. The author did an amazing job at creating such and informative and very interesting book that flowed so well. I had to read this book in one sitting as I was enjoying it that much everything else could wait. I loved comparing the tourism back in the day to modern times this made many of the stories in this book rather comical to read. It was so fascinating to learn how tourism developed I especially enjoyed the section on the introduction of spa type treatments some where rather strange. I was quite shocked more didn't die abroad with the stories about drinking water. There was so many interesting developments that I learnt so much about the changes in tourism. I especially loved reading about the use of beaches and the changes from avoiding the sun to sun worshippers. I just loved this book so much it actually has a rating of 4.5 stars. There were some great pictures in the book to break up the text. I just would of loved to see more to get to that 5th stars. As the pictures add and extra element to the reading experience and break up the text. I just couldn't get enough about the tales from the increasing use of travel journals. It was great having a list of what people were taking on holiday. I really can't recommend this book enough especially those who love to learn about travel history.
Only the highest of praise goes out to the author and publishers for bringing us this very interesting and enjoyable history that had me hooked so bad I didn't want the book to end. I will definitely be looking out for more books by this amazing author.
Only the highest of praise goes out to the author and publishers for bringing us this very interesting and enjoyable history that had me hooked so bad I didn't want the book to end. I will definitely be looking out for more books by this amazing author.
August 25, 2023
The Brits love, not only just getting away from their front door as it were, but travelling abroad. Tourists offers interesting insight into when and how it all began and how it has evolved and the changes in habits, including how we use beaches over the centuries. It has curious facts of things that people may not think of or know, about where people were travelling to, even in the last century or two and about when and how guidebooks came into being and became firmly part of the tourism mix of what people felt they need/needed and how they influenced and interested people, sparking their imaginations and how thoughts can become reality. You also learn about some spa treatments, some of which would be considered rather unusual for today, but not so in the period they were created and used for the tourism industry. You see how many behaviours have changed over the years and how the attitude towards leisure time has too.
It is splendidly presented inside with a mixture of facts and photos, making it rather pleasant to read.
It is splendidly presented inside with a mixture of facts and photos, making it rather pleasant to read.
August 16, 2023
A fun history of British travel to continental Europe from the Battle of Waterloo to Beach Vacations after the Second World War. The book is filled with details that explain, for example, why camping trips became popular before the invention of sleeping bags or waterproof tents - camping was affordable, did not require the multiple changes of clothing required by hotel stays and was encouraged by the Scouting movement and various religious organizations as a wholesome way to holiday. Unfortunately, Lethbridge's efforts to the present this history both chronologically and thematically results in repetition. (The gruesome visits of tourists to Waterloo immediately after the battle are described more than once) and the book ends abruptly in the 1950s. I would have been interested to read more about post-war mass tourism including cruise travel, which is summarized in a very short coda at the end of the book. An enjoyable vacation read but I prefer Servants by the same author.
March 22, 2024
Reading Tourists is a compelling way of revisiting the recent history of British tourism. What struck me the most was how little tourism has changed in character over two hundred years despite the modernisation of Britain. While technology has transformed some aspects of tourism, it seems that the social characteristics of tourism have rarely changed and we find ourselves upholding the same habits as our ancestors abroad.
Before reading this book, I expected a chronological recounting of the history of tourism. Instead, the author selects certain facets of tourism - without a particular order and often going beyond scope - and details these with plenty of material and anecdotes. In the end, you get more than you bargain for, which I think is both the highlight and the drawback of this book as although the stories were interesting, they became increasingly repetitive with each chapter.
Before reading this book, I expected a chronological recounting of the history of tourism. Instead, the author selects certain facets of tourism - without a particular order and often going beyond scope - and details these with plenty of material and anecdotes. In the end, you get more than you bargain for, which I think is both the highlight and the drawback of this book as although the stories were interesting, they became increasingly repetitive with each chapter.
December 14, 2024
An okay read. Could have been half as long. If you wade through all the many quotes, the parts written by the author of analysis and summary were interesting. Generally far too much description and far too little analysis. A lot of extraneous detail that could have been edited out - like unnecessary long descriptions of packing lists. There were some interesting new facts (tourism to Waterloo and other battlefields, a mention in passing that people were tourists to Dachau while it was IN operation and went away “inspired” - yikes?!?). Overall, left with the impression that tourism and tourists today are, at their heart, just as they were when first “invented” in the 1800s. Very well researched.
October 23, 2025
It’s hard to place this book. It’s certainly full of interesting facts about the history of tourism — how the industry developed, and how British travelers have influenced (and sometimes disrupted) other countries and cultures. I read one review that described it as “humorous,” but I found it anything but.
For me, this felt more like a straightforward history book. While informative, it was written in a rather dull tone, and I struggled to find much energy or liveliness in the prose. Despite the fascinating subject matter, the storytelling never quite took off.
For me, this felt more like a straightforward history book. While informative, it was written in a rather dull tone, and I struggled to find much energy or liveliness in the prose. Despite the fascinating subject matter, the storytelling never quite took off.
February 18, 2023
Promises more than it delivers. The writing style was dry in places and didn’t flow brilliantly.
My biggest problem was the padding. If you’ve given a couple of examples of how guidebooks glossed over facts, you don’t need to keep repeating them. It’s almost as if the author had to write a book of certain length, came up short and just started repeating points and adding extra words in.
Interesting info in places but overall disappointing.
My biggest problem was the padding. If you’ve given a couple of examples of how guidebooks glossed over facts, you don’t need to keep repeating them. It’s almost as if the author had to write a book of certain length, came up short and just started repeating points and adding extra words in.
Interesting info in places but overall disappointing.
May 29, 2023
Wasn’t sure what to expect with this one, but it delivered some nice surprises with a wonderfully warm tone throughout.
The history and context of tourism is laid bare, including a surprising section on tourism to Nazi German pre WWII. I guess it shows that people have conveniently overlooked problematic situations for decades.
The book is full of little asides that reveal how tourism shaped so much, and adapted things to suit its needs, often at the cost of traditional local circumstances.
The history and context of tourism is laid bare, including a surprising section on tourism to Nazi German pre WWII. I guess it shows that people have conveniently overlooked problematic situations for decades.
The book is full of little asides that reveal how tourism shaped so much, and adapted things to suit its needs, often at the cost of traditional local circumstances.
January 19, 2025
Interesting but Dense Reading
I almost gave up on this book more than once, the quotes and facts from a seemingly endless number of sources made it hard going at times. But like a determined tourist I pushed on to the end and was glad when the journey was finished.
I suppose the problem is how do you make somewhat boring accounts from the past interesting?
I recommend the book, it gives some intriguing insights into the past but it is heavy going at times.
I almost gave up on this book more than once, the quotes and facts from a seemingly endless number of sources made it hard going at times. But like a determined tourist I pushed on to the end and was glad when the journey was finished.
I suppose the problem is how do you make somewhat boring accounts from the past interesting?
I recommend the book, it gives some intriguing insights into the past but it is heavy going at times.
May 9, 2023
It’s an interesting topic, but in the end was just a little bit too dry for me. Maybe it was the structure of the book, but I found it a little too long.
That’s just my personal opinion; clearly a huge amount of research has gone into this book and the author’s passion for the subject shines through.
That’s just my personal opinion; clearly a huge amount of research has gone into this book and the author’s passion for the subject shines through.
September 30, 2025
I personally wouldn’t rate it as bad as some others on here. Yes the red threat isn’t really there, there definately could have been a better structure throughout the book, but the chapters by itself were interesting and went into details, which is something I personally really enjoy. Should there be another one that covers different aspects? Yes.
March 15, 2024
This is an interesting and kind of amusing book, some of these holidays just sound awful, folk singing whilst walking up mountains really not my kind of holiday. I discovered this book through the rest is history podcast and glad I did.
October 14, 2024
I rarely abandon a book but had to give up on this just over 100 pages in, and what I did read was a real slog. I had high hopes for this book but it's very dull and goes into way too much detail about tangential topics.
March 8, 2023
Interesting story of how the travel industry developed in Britain, with lots of quotations and anecdotes from early travellers
August 24, 2023
A very well researched book that looks at the development of tourism from the original grand tours of the upper classes. Some very entertaining anecdotes made me laugh out loud. A great holiday read.
Read
September 7, 2023I skim read it.
March 18, 2024
A very fine popular history of Brits abroad, carrying class differences and complaints with them for three centuries. Lethbridge shares deep research in wry tones.
March 29, 2024
An interesting overview of the history of British continental tourism. The style is light and very readable but appears to be backed by considerable research. A great book for the non-specialist.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews