Britain | Hot trend

Britons warm up to saunas

Hipsters get almost naked. Dockers are unimpressed

2KDTME6 Mobile sauna hut on Studland Beach in winter, Isle of Purbeck, Dorset, UK, January.
Image: Alamy

A TOPLESS MAN sits at a poker table, playing cards held close to his chest. He has just been downstairs in the banya, a Russian kind of sauna. The New Docklands Russian Banya & Steam Baths in east London is one of the East End’s last surviving public baths, a longtime haven for cabbies, boxers and dockworkers. But even as one type of bathing culture fades, another is on the rise.

This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “Hot new trend”

From the March 18th 2023 edition

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