This book focuses on Thomas Arthur Leonard, a Congregational minister in Colne, Lancashire in the 1890s, and the Co-operative Holidays Association, which he founded in 1893. The Co-operative Holidays Association, which was re-named the Countrywide Holidays Association in 1964, but was always affectionately known as the CHA, operated as an independent provider of outdoor holidays until 2002. Leonard left the CHA in 1913 to establish the Holiday Fellowship, an organisation with similar ideals to the CHA, which continues to trade as HF Holidays. Leonard was also instrumental in the establishment of the Youth Hostels Association in 1930 and the formation of the Ramblers’ Association in 1935, of which he was the first President. He strongly supported the National Trust, founded in 1895, and was a stalwart of the campaign for national parks during the 1930s. He was a founder member of the Friends of the Lake District in 1934, and was connected with a number of other outdoor holiday organisations. This book details the life and achievements of this extraordinary man, who rebelled against the conventionality of the 1880s and 1890s and was appalled by the dull and grim lives of artisans and textile workers in the industrial north of England. It also tells the story of the CHA, which pioneered walking holidays in the outdoors for working people, from its foundation in 1893 to its demise in 2004. The book describes how the CHA faced the challenges of changing social, economic and cultural conditions during the twentieth century, such as increasing affluence and consumer choice, changing cultural attitudes and expectations, the popularisation of outdoor recreation and the proliferation of outdoor holiday providers. It shows how the CHA drifted away from its original ideals in an attempt to remain viable in the face of increasing consumerism, but, nevertheless, continued to provide holidays for thousands of people based on healthy recreation and quiet enjoyment, and the principles of friendship and fellowship.

This book is the first transnational history of rambling and mountaineering. Focussing on the critical turn-of-the-century era, it offers new insights into alpine development, attitudes to danger, cultures of time, internationalism and domesticity in the outdoors. It charts an emerging group of mass tourist activities, and argues that these thousands of walkers and climbers can only be understood within the context of the urban cultures from which most of them came. In doing so, it offers a fresh perspective on the relationship of alpinists and countryside enthusiasts to the modern world. Instead of an escape from or rejection of modernity, it finds that upland trampers and climbers contested what it meant to be modern, used those modern identities to make political claims on rural space and rural people, and sought to define what a more modern future society should be like.

In England, perhaps more than most places, people's engagement with the landscape is deeply felt and has often been expressed through artistic media. The popularity of walking and walking clubs perhaps provides the most compelling evidence of the important role landscape plays in people's lives. Not only is individual identity rooted in experiencing landscape, but under the multiple impacts of social fragmentation, global economic restructuring and European integration, membership in recreational walking groups helps recover a sense of community. Moving between the 1750s and the present, this transdisciplinary book explores the powerful role of landscape in the formation of historical class relations and national identity. The author's direct field experience of fell walking in the Lake District and with various locally based clubs includes investigation of the roles gender and race play. She shows how the politics of access to open spaces has implications beyond the immediate geographical areas considered and ultimately involves questions of citizenship.

In the final decades of the nineteenth century modernizing interpretations of leisure became of interest to social policy makers and cultural critics, producing a discourse of leisure and voluntarism that flourished until the Second World War. The free time of British citizens was increasingly seen as a sphere of social citizenship and community-building. Through major social thinkers, including William Morris, Thomas Hill Green, Bernard Bosanquet and John Hobson, leisure and voluntarism were theorized in terms of the good society. In post-First World War social reconstruction these writers remained influential as leisure became a field of social service, directed towards a new society and working through voluntary association in civic societies, settlements, new estate community-centres, village halls and church-based communities. This volume documents the parallel cultural shift from charitable philanthropy to social service and from rational recreation to leisure, teasing out intellectual influences which included social idealism, liberalism and socialism. Leisure, Robert Snape claims, has been a central and under-recognized organizing force in British communities. Leisure, Voluntary Action and Social Change in Britain, 1880-1939 marks a much needed addition to the historiography of leisure and an antidote to the widely misunderstood implications of leisure to social policy today.

Teaching and Learning Foreign Languages provides a comprehensive history of language teaching and learning in the UK from its earliest beginnings to the year 2000. McLelland offers the first history of the social context of foreign language education in Britain, as well as an overview of changing approaches, methods and techniques in language teaching and learning. The important impact of classroom-external factors on developments in language teaching and learning is also taken into account, particularly regarding the policies and public examination requirements of the 20th century. Beginning with a chronological overview of language teaching and learning in Britain, McLelland explores which languages were learned when, why and by whom, before examining the social history of language teaching and learning in greater detail, addressing topics including the status that language learning and teaching have held in society. McLelland also provides a history of how languages have been taught, contrasting historical developments with current orthodoxies of language teaching. Experiences outside school are discussed with reference to examples from adult education, teach-yourself courses and military language learning. Providing an accessible, authoritative history of language education in Britain, Teaching and Learning Foreign Languages will appeal to academics and postgraduate students engaged in the history of education and language learning across the world. The book will also be of interest to teacher educators, trainee and practising teachers, policymakers and curriculum developers.

This book poses a major revisionist challenge to 20th century British labour history, aiming to look beyond the Marxist and Fabian exclusion of working class experience, notably religion and self-help, in order to exaggerate ‘labour movement’ class cohesion. Instead of a ‘forward march’ to secular state-socialism, the research presented here is devoted to a rich diversity of social movements and ideas. In this collection of essays, the editors establish the liberal-pluralist tradition, with the following chapters covering three distinct sections. Part One, ‘Other Forms of Association’ covers subjects such as trade unions, the Co-operative Party, women’s community activism and Protestant Nonconformity. Part Two, ‘Other Leaders’, covers employer Edward Cadbury; Trades Union Congress leader Walter Citrine; and the electricians’ leader, Frank Chapple. Part Three, ‘Other Intellectuals’, considers G.D.H. Cole, Michael Young and left libertarianism by Stuart White. Readers interested in the British Labour movement will find this an invaluable resource.

This book presents a portrait of the Pennine Way, Britain's oldest and best known long-distance footpath, tracing its remarkable history through the experiences of walkers past and present. As Andrew McCloy walks the 268-mile route from the Derbyshire Peak District to the Scottish borders, he discovers how the Pennine Way set a benchmark for personal challenge and adventure and how reconnecting with wild places and the unhurried rhythm of the long walk continue to provide a much-needed antidote to our busy modern age. The resilience of the long distance walker is mirrored in the path's fascinating history: the initial struggle for access, battles to tame the bogs, later challenges of path erosion and the fluctuating circumstances of the rural hostel. Above all else however this is a book about Pennine Way people - from crusading ramblers to resourceful B&B landladies, hard working rangers to fanatical trail walkers. Their conversations and memories are woven into the narrative to give an account of the changing fortunes of the path and its special significance. Personal, thoughtful and often humorous, The Pennine Way - the Path, the People, the Journey is an exploration of our desire for challenge and adventure, the stimulation of wild places and how a long journey on foot through our own country still resonates today. It will appeal to people who have walked or are preparing to walk the Pennine Way, as well as to those with an interest in the history and legacy of this iconic path.