Annabelle Thorpe uses her considerable experience as a travel journalist to cast a perceptive and often witty eye over the past 400 years of how the Brits have holidayed, both at home and abroad. The result is an engaging, entertaining, enlightening and insightful social history. -- Mary Novakovic, author of My Family and Other Animals An engaging, perceptive and thought-provoking exploration of the evolution of the British holiday, covering everything from spa breaks and seaside resorts to climate change and overtourism. Deftly blending history, interviews and personal stories, Annabelle Thorpe writes with charm and style about how, where and why we travel. -- Shafik Meghji, author of Small Earthquakes and Crossed Off the Map Annabelle is a superb travel writer. This book is deeply researched, and brought wonderfully to life through her telling of Britain's 400 years of holiday history, through the earliest rail holidays to package holidays on the Med. It's nostalgic, inspiring and also extremely endearing; a real heartwarming portrait of Britain and our love of time off. I couldn't put it down. -- Cathy Adams * The Times * Full of fascinating titbits and with prose like velvet, The Great Escape reads like a 300-page holiday. -- Ben Aitken, author of Sh*tty Breaks From (just about) no tourism to overtourism, Thorpe reports on the rise of holidaymaking in the country that invented it. This is a concise, incisive analysis of how we have adapted to use our leisure time as technology from trains to jet planes and the internet has advanced and opened up the globe. How we spend our time off tells us a lot about who we are - and Thorpe understands that. -- Tom Chesshyre, author of Wild Peaks: A Journey on Foot Through Englands First National Park
