Margaret B. was an ordinary middle-class English girl of the late Victorian era, not wealthy but comfortable. Father was a Church of England cleric and, later, she would marry another. Meanwhile, the family took holidays and made trips around England, not venturing abroad, and these are the pictures from those happy days, all sunny ones. Soon there would be charabancs, deckchairs and electric light. For Margaret B., at the seaside there were bathing machines, and modesty forbade being seen out of the water in anything other than full dress, including hat. In the country, holidaymakers were a rarity. The railways could take you almost anywhere, but it was only the middle classes who went. So there were no crowds, and many of our pictures show tourist hotspots before they were hot, before there was any such thing as a car park. The text provides local knowledge and background to the photographs and is an enjoyable read in itself, but the real pleasure is in seeing Brighton, Margate, Scarborough, Broadstairs, Clovelly, Ilfracombe, Minehead and other such places before it all happened. See Exmoor, the White Peak and Somerset when the loudest noise was the click of the camera shutter. The nostalgia is almost unbearable. AUTHOR: Gordon Thorburn is the author of the best-selling 'Men and Sheds'. For Remember When he has authored "Pocket Guide to Pubs and their Histories", 'The Classic Allotment' and 'The Classic Herb Garden'. Other books have included 'Cassius, the true story of a courageous police dog', and 'No Need To Die'; about American volunteers in RAF Bomber Command in WW2. ILLUSTRATIONS: b/w photos
