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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
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Rachel Cooke

This history of holidays gone by will leave you grateful to be living in the jet age

Detail of an wood engraving showing Albert Smith giving an illustrated lecture on his ascent of Mont Blanc in the Egyptian Hall in London in 1852.
Albert Smith entertained Victorian audiences with accounts of his Alpine adventures in the 1850s. Photograph: GRANGER/Historical Picture Archive/Alamy

If holidays are heaven, they’re also hell. Cancelled planes, endless queues, scary weather – and then you come home to the washing and, in my case, a ruthless attack by Cydalima perspectalis, AKA box-tree moth caterpillars, on your carefully tended hedges.

Think of the cheese, I tell myself, inhaling a bottle of Ambre Solaire for courage as I pack. But which of us hasn’t wondered, as we stand in line for a hire car, if we wouldn’t have been better off staying at home?

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