![]() ![]() Its dereliction told a story we all knew. And it all collided at the Grand, where outside kittiwakes roosted on every sill and cornice, and inside holidays came to die. These two chapters in the history of English holiday-making looked askance at each other across the bay, one imperious if timeworn, the other newer yet somehow more dated. The parkland between had Italianate gardens and sweeping views - and an air of refinement that seemed a world away from the gaudy main beachfront. A small funicular trundled from the waterfront to the top of South Cliff, where rows of stucco-fronted terraces lined an esplanade. A honeycombed limestone palace, it dated back to 1858, when the town was in its Victorian pomp. Stooped men in high-visibility vests led giggling toddlers on donkey rides along the sand.Īway from the neon palisades, at the southern end of the bay, sat the old spa. I headed straight to the promenade, where expressionless people fed coins into arcade-hall slot machines and takeaways served food that was all brown and fried. I’d arrived earlier that day after a five-hour drive, the town announcing itself with a traffic jam and the smell of fish. But was it possible to find that nourishment at home? I had always thought that the satisfactions of travel were contingent on distance, both physical and cultural. ![]() It also provided a gateway to some fascinating places, which I hoped might challenge my pessimistic assumptions about England’s capacity to delight and surprise. This was a place whose rise and fall said much about the state of England, and more particularly about the English holiday. I had come to the northeast primarily because it was the biggest blank on my own map of the country, and Scarborough had already proved itself to be the perfect trailhead. ![]() ![]() But with foreign travel still curtailed, the U.K.’s politicians and travel industry, buoyed by the country’s successful vaccine rollout, were encouraging people to holiday within its borders. I had spent more than a decade working as a “travel writer,” one of the many jobs (albeit an inconsequential one) that the pandemic had rendered superfluous. This acknowledgment led me to conclude that I owed some reparation for my abandonment of home. If England was crap, it was, partly, because the people in it wanted to be somewhere else. It was surely no coincidence that the country felt atomized when so much of our leisure time was spent overseas. Travel, it occurred to me over the course of these covid-stricken months, had in many ways become an engine of this schism. Within its air of metropolitan disdain lurked an augury of England’s post-Brexit identity crisis, in which the country appears permanently torn between the deflating liberal dreams still harbored in the cities and the backlash fermenting in the provinces left behind. I went to Las Vegas to test whether I was really ready for life on the other side of the pandemicīut I have wondered, looking back, whether “Crap Towns” foreshadowed something more profound. At the time, I wanted nothing more than to travel overseas, at least partly because I deplored the gray familiarity of the country I called home. Though the book was careful to select towns from all parts of the country, most of its scorn landed on England, and the principal allegation was clear: The English provinces in the new millennium were risible and reactionary, stagnant backwaters in a country past its prime.įor a young person, born and raised in London and keen to experience the world, this was obvious and unarguable. I never bought “ Crap Towns,” but I thumbed through it occasionally when waiting in line, and I found a condescending amusement in the premise, which was summarized in the opening line: “Britain is crap.”Īt one level it was harmless stuff, channeling a national talent for self-deprecation that still finds expression in Twitter accounts like a mordant celebration of British mediocrity. In 2003, a curious little book appeared by the cash registers of London’s bookshops. ![]()
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