Nigel J. Morgan and Annette Pritchard, Power, Politics and the Seaside: The Development of Devon's Resorts in the Twentieth Century. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1999. ix + 243 pp. $80.00 cloth.

Abstract

When living in Britain in the mid-1990s, I asked friends where I should go in the UK with my family for a week during a spring holiday. The advice among friends at Cambridge was to go to Devon. Morgan and Pritchard's book provides a partial explanation as to why I was given this advice. Since the late nineteenth century, seaside towns in Devon have been among Britain's premier resorts, promoting themselves as the “English Riviera.” This book examines the continuing success of resort promoters in maintaining the “social tone” of Devon's resorts and illuminates broader changes in the relationship of leisure and tourism to social stratification during the twentieth century.