The Smell of the Continent

by Richard Mullen and James Munson

      Although Europe must have been full of young men on the Grand Tour during the 17th and 18th centuries, the French Revolution followed by the Napoleonic Wars ensured that it was too dangerous for most people. But the summer of 1814 saw the birth of tourism as we know it, and here is a whole book all about this phenomenon.

This book covers the hundred years from 1814 up to the beginning of the First World War, perhaps the golden age of the British tourist. Learn about the era when Britain was king, and everybody else was a foreigner. Discover what these early tourists brought with them, the books they used, what they thought of where they went and their writings. It makes for fascinating reading, asnd unless you are off to vacation in a war zone or some little-known corner of the world, travel is certainly nothing like this today. This book’s chapters explore different aspects of travel, such as why people went, what they went to see, the luggage they took, sanitation, travellers’ guides etc, which is a good way of dealing with such a huge subject. However, at times, I wished there was more of a chronology as tourism in 1814 was nothing like it would have been in 1914 and the places visited had undergone vast changes. But a book of fewer than 400 pages, even one with such wee print cannot do everything and it does make a good fist of it. You can even dip into it just about anywhere and start reading, being sure to find some fascinating titbit of information that, unless you are already an expert on this subject, you probably did not know. At the back is an index, notes on where the sources came from and a list of further reading listed under various headings. Websites you will have to find for yourself, but I was overall pretty impressed with this book which manages to cram a lot into a small amount of space.