Tourists
How the British Went Abroad to Find Themselves
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Tourists
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Narrated by:
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Lucy Lethbridge
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By:
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Lucy Lethbridge
About this listen
Bloomsbury presents Tourists written and read by Lucy Lethbridge.
*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.
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Critic reviews
"Lucy Lethbridge’s warmth and wit make her the perfect tour guide to the intriguing history of the British abroad." (Lucasta Miller)
"To write well about the attempts of the British to enjoy themselves in that fraught territory ‘abroad’, you need a sense of the ridiculous, an eye for the poignant, the ability to leaven a mass of date with wit. In Tourists, Lucy Lethbridge ticks all the boxes." (Andrew Martin)
"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)
What listeners say about Tourists
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- C
- 27-03-23
Delightful, insightful and informative
1. Nothing wrong with the narration - it's read by the author, who is not trying to "enact" the people and personalities herein
2.Great and often hilarious social history about a sibject we would all do well to think a bit more about
3. If you enjoy this, the author has an older and equally interesting book on the social history of domestic service, but not in audio form
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Armin Powalka
- 13-02-23
Terrible narrator!
Very interesting topic but this narrator has such a irritating voice that you need to struggle to keep listening, unmitigated disaster!
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- GM
- 15-10-22
lacking any critical approach and wider context
TL;DR: A chronological laundry list of when the British went where for tourism and what they complained about. (Spoiler alert: it's always the food and each other).
There is no mention of colonialism and orientalism, the driving force and framework by which British tourist practices have always been defined.
Also no mention of how their actions affected local communities and the environment. (The maximum we are getting is that in Spain locals went from fishing to serving tourists for a living).
Overall, a huge missed opportunity to use the enormous amount of research that went into this book for some kind of analysis, instead of just listing it out.
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1 person found this helpful