School’s out for summer! This is the ideal time to read a book about the summer holidays. A light-hearted exploration of what children of various social classes and backgrounds did on their breaks from school, spanning the years 1930 – 1980. The reason for stopping it at 1980 is the availability of computers and video games to occupy children’s time.

The book is split into sections according to what kind of summer holidays were had, including staying at home during the period, as well as going to places for day trips or long breaks. The content is mainly from contributors, some of them well-known, others not. The author clearly spent a lot of time talking to people about their summer holidays and was able to make generalisations because many people told her of similar experiences. There are photographs from the contributors too. It’s an enjoyable read which is mainly targeted at nostalgic British people who were children during the decades covered, but is also a valuable document of social history of a time when children were left to run wild outdoors, when they played on bombsites, going abroad was rare and glamorous, families loaded up their cars with tins of beans, and journeys took forever. Mothers and fathers get their own dedicated chapters. We also hear about hop picking, huge country estates, holiday camps and children who stayed at boarding school the year round.

I thought that the author’s reflections at the end of the book went a little too far. She assumed that school summer holidays are completely different now, and in some ways they are, but not all children hate the outdoors, own multiple screen devices to which they are addicted, are uninterested in nature, turn their noses up at ordinary food, and demand to be taken on expensive foreign holidays. It sounded like she was writing from personal experience, so perhaps she only knows children who are privileged and spoiled.

Published by Little, Brown in 2020.