Today, many people take the idea of holidays for granted and regard the provision of paid time off as a right. This book argues that popular tourism has its roots in collective organisation and charts the development of the working class holiday over two centuries. Starting with the cult of St. Monday, the problem of absenteeism of northern textile workers during Wakes Week, and culminating in the cheap foreign package holiday of the late 20th century, this study recounts how short, unpaid and often unauthorised periods of leave from work became organised and legitimised through legislation,...

Detailed and comprehensive, this book is the first survey of cinema exhibition in Britain from its inception until the present.
Charting the development of cinema exhibition and cinema-going in Britain from the first public film screening by the Lumiere Brothers' at London's Regent Street Polytechnic in February 1896, through to the development of the multiplex and giant megaplex cinemas, the history of cinema exhibition is placed in its wider social, cultural and economic contexts. Adopting a chronological structure, this book takes into account how changes in the structure of the film...

Healthy living in the Alps' examines the relationship between the search for relief from respiratory diseases, such as tuberculosis, in high alpine resorts and the development in the same places of winter sports tourism.
The first winter visitors to the Swiss Alps began to arrive in the 1860s and were encouraged to take outdoor exercise as part of their cure regime. They also had healthy visitors and companions who sought recreation while the invalids were resting as part of the sanatoria routine. Demonstrating that this is not just part of the history of Switzerland but of Britain too,...

British teenagers witnessed immense cultural change in the period following the second world war. There were less than 100 juke boxes in Britain in 1945 and over 15,000 by 1958. Over the same period there was a similar unprecedented expansion of casual youth venues in the form of cafes, snack, milk and coffee bars where young people could hear the sounds of hot American jazz and rock 'n' roll.
It has been a common assumption among academics and cultural historians alike that British youth between 1945 and 1960 underwent a period of massive 'Americanisation'. Juke Box Britain contests this...

Songs of Protest, Songs of Love' shows how songs can bring back voices from the past in a new way. The focus of the book is on rural Britain in a time of crisis. As the traditional rights of peasants were being jettisoned to enforce a new system of enclosure, rural labourers chanted out their concerns in songs of protest. These songs became increasingly strident and popular after the 1770s as rural life became even more precarious with fluctuating grain prices and uncertain employment opportunities. Many ballads in the eighteenth century were love songs. But these are also rich in social...

History on British television' explores the production and consumption of factual history programming on British television. The chronological development of Western historiography is compared to phases of British television history production, highlighting how progressive developments in social and cultural trends have shaped what we make of the past and what the past makes of us.
Charting the rise and dominance of television history as a popular cultural form, the book examines how the past has become a model for citizenship, prioritising certain groups and classes, marginalising...

This book examines the relationship between class and culture in 1930s Britain. Focusing on the reading and cinema-going tastes of the working classes, Robert James' landmark study combines rigorous historical analysis with a close textual reading of visual and written sources to appraise the role of popular leisure in this fascinating decade. Drawing on a wealth of original research, this lively and accessible book adds immeasurably to our knowledge of working-class leisure pursuits in this contentious period. It is a key intervention in the field, providing both an imaginative approach to...

This book is the first study of how the BBC, through radio, tried to represent what it meant to be British. The book combines an examination of the BBC's desire to construct a strong, unitary sense of Britishness (through empire and the monarchy) with a thorough consideration of the broadcasting in the non-English parts of the United Kingdom.

This book is the story of two holiday camp chains established in the 1930s that provided thousands with packaged pleasure. Warner and Butlin's commercial camps emerged at the intersection of cultural shifts that politicised working-class leisure and consumption. Entertainment fostered in the post-war camps provided a forum for popular pleasure that reinforced the idea of a 'national' culture grown from the common experience of war.
Butlin and Warner, the big commercial chains of the 50s and 60s, are enmeshed in our social and cultural history. Dawson uncovers the significance of the...

Cricket and broadcasting explores how the significance of radio and television to cricket in England has grown since the beginnings of broadcasting.
Since the Second World War cricket has been increasingly shaped by its relationship with broadcasting which has been a force for conservatism and change. Representations of cricket on radio and television have done much to determine levels of interest and participation in the sport. Major changes such as the growth of the limited-overs game, the expansion of international cricket, reforms to County Championship and the rise of sponsorship...