Britons still do like to be beside the seaside

In 1936 an enterprising businessman lit upon a way to make the British seaside even more of an endurance test. To icy seas, leaden skies and average annual temperatures of 10°C, Billy Butlin added low, wooden huts to house holidaymakers; a Tannoy system to rouse them each morning; and stringent rules to confine them to those huts by 11.15pm. Butlin, observed the author Bill Bryson, had repackaged “the prisoner-of-war camp as holiday, and, this being Britain, people loved it.”