The 1950s and 1960s were a transformative period in Britain, and an important part of this was how Britons’ lives were changed when they began flying abroad for their holidays. In A World Away Michael John Law investigates how something that previously only the rich could afford became available to working-class holidaymakers.
A World Away moves beyond the big players in the tourist industry and technical accounts of the airplanes used by tour operators to tell the histories of the people who were there, both tourists and tour guides, using their personal testimonies. Until now there has been uncertainty about the identity of these new tourists: some feared they were working-class intruders who might invade the pristine destinations favoured by the elite; others claimed that most were from the middle class. Using new data derived from flight accident investigations, Law explains the complex origins of these new flyers. In British society this unprecedented mobility could not go unpunished, and the new tourists were lampooned in books and newspapers aimed at the middle classes. Law shows how popular culture, movies, and music influenced the decision to travel, and what actually happened when these new holidaymakers went abroad.
Law investigates the package tour industry from its mid-century origins through its inherent weaknesses, governmental interference, and unforeseen world events that contributed to its partial failure in the early 1970s. A World Away provides the definitive account of this important change in postwar British society.

Michael John Law is a research fellow in history at the University of Westminster and the author of Not Like Home: American Visitors to Britain in the 1950s.

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“In A World Away the post-war clamour for foreign package holidays is revealed through the people, places, and planes that shaped it. Looking beyond the stereotypes, Michael John Law provides welcome new insights into the fabled death of the British seaside holiday and, by judging the package tour on its own terms, asserts its rightful place in Britain’s leisure history.” Kathryn Ferry, author of Seaside 100: A History of the British Seaside in 100 Objects