For two centuries after 1815, middle-class British tourists travelled to destinations amazing, marvellous and deeply shocking
Tourists: How the British Went Abroad to Find Themselves
LUCY LETHBRIDGE
(BLOOMSBURY, 320 PP, £20)
tablet bookshop price £18 • tel 020 7799 4064
In 1937, the Polytechnic Touring Association published a brochure for holidays in Germany. The opening picture was of a Rhineland castle with a swastika flag; the accompanying slogan read “The Land of Dreams Come True”.
The Nazis had been quick to identify tourism as a propaganda tool, and the British proved remarkably gullible. It was even possible to visit Dachau and lunch with the inmates. One English traveller reported that the prison camp was where the Germans put “wasters, idlers, social undesirables, Jewish profiteers and riff-raff”.
This is just one of the extraordinary facts collected by Lucy Lethbridge in her engrossing and superbly researched book. Equally shocking is the passage on sightseers after the Battle of Waterloo. “The great amusement at Bruxelles,” according to Lady Caroline Lamb, was to “make large parties and go to the field of battle & pick up a skull or an old shoe or a letter, and bring it home”.
