The British seaside holiday began with the railways. Before the mid 19th century and the tentacle-spread of rail to the country’s outer edges, the coastline was, apart from a few Georgian watering holes, inhabited mainly by fishermen. A century later, sand and shingle was decked with resorts, spas, piers and promenades.
We owe to the railways, as Andrew Martin’s hugely entertaining and informative book points out, the brief golden age of the English holiday with its grand hotels, sandcastles, illuminations and ice creams. And if those resorts are now in decline, melancholy shadows of their former splendour, this is not just the fault of cheap foreign travel: it is the closure of the railway stations and branch lines that once brought the throngs.
