Packaging Pleasure

This is an excellent book that examines the history of holiday camps and paid holidays and, in doing so, furthers our understanding of class and gender relations in the first half of the twentieth century. At the heart of the thesis is the contention that the rise of the holiday camp can only be understood within a broader political, economic and social context. In analysing this phenomenon, the book draws on key debates on the relationships between class, gender, and citizenship during a period in which Sandra Dawson rightfully identifies a ‘revolutionary change in consumption’. The book traces the emergence of two key entrepreneurs, Butlin and Warner, and examines how they responded to the challenges and opportunities which the 1930s, war and the post-war period brought. The book adopts a sound chapter structure and identifies themes grounded in a wealth of historiography. It is particularly pleasing that the political dimension and the role of the state figure greatly in the early chapters, as this sets the camps into context and gives us a greater understanding of their rationale and popularity. Dawson makes some astute observations on how entrepreneurs such as Butlin were successful in breaking into a very insular working-class culture that clung to drinking in local pubs, day-trips to the seaside or simply staying at home. Indeed, these activities were often sharply divided along gendered lines, a working-class tradition which, Dawson maintains, was challenged by the holiday camps’ emphasis on heterosocial leisure. Thus, while traditional sports such as football, cricket and gambling were incorporated into Holiday Camp life, the entertainment was reoriented to appeal to both sexes. Men and women would play in the same teams, with humorous cross-dressing adding to the fun. Moreover, the public bar, for so long the preserve of men, was opened up to both sexes and became a place where traditional gendered dividing-lines over alcohol and gambling appeared to melt away. Indeed, what the camps perhaps provided was a suspension of the everyday life of, and an escape from the gendered roles in, traditional working-class communities

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