ENGLISH SEASIDE

Let's go to the Beach! This wonderful English Heritage book is guaranteed to bring a smile to every face, with its hundreds of photos arranged thematically recording the beauties and horrors of that quintessentially English invention, the seaside resort. The golden age of seaside holidays began with the railways in the mid-19th century and ended with the package holidays of the sixties, with Scarborough being the world's first example of a tourist-oriented coastal town. Starting with fishing, lighthouses, clocktowers, tidal charts, wrecks, lifeboats and wartime fortifications, the book moves on to piers, esplanades, hotels, Towers, Winter Gardens, deckchairs, beach huts, trams and illuminations and the lighter side of the seaside holiday with the Punch and Judy show at Broadstairs in a snap that could have been taken any time in the past 70 years. Piers are often architectural masterpieces, for instance the Art Deco pier at Worthing, and the architecture of the thirties includes hotels such as the incomparable Midland at Morecambe, familiar as the setting for Poirot episodes, and the Royal York Hotel, Ryde. Beach huts are colourful additions to many resorts, gently satirised in the playful Mablethorpe sculpture "Jabba the Hut". Other notable beach sculptures are Cornelia Parker's Folkestone Mermaid, Anthony Gormley's 100 figures on Crosby beach, and the realistic cormorants on the rocks at Morecambe. Roller coasters, helter skelters, joke shops and tea parlours are a carnivalesque tradition and the book concludes with the popular pastime of simply "staring out to sea". Large weighty softback, 208pp, lots of colour photos on every page.