‘Going to the beach’ looks very different in Britain

While affection for the British seaside has surged and fallen over the 20th century, it has been an enduring source of inspiration for artists including Martin Parr and Vinca Petersen. Now it’s the focus of new photography books.

While a British summer is never a guarantee of hot weather, there’s one thing you can be sure of: Brits will be going to the beach. For centuries, and in all kinds of weather, the British have licked ice creams, strolled piers and dropped coins in arcade games at the seaside. The town of Scarborough on England’s North Sea coastline, widely considered Britain’s first seaside resort, has been welcoming tourists to its restorative spa waters for around 400 years. “The concept of going to the beach for leisure was something that the British invented,” architectural historian Kathryn Ferry, told CNN, in a view shared by many experts. “It’s part of our nation’s story, our island’s story, and there is a sense that it is important for our identity. British people have that need to go to the coast and smell that sea air,” she said. While affection for the British seaside has, much like the tides, surged and fallen over the 20th century, it has been an enduring source of inspiration for artists including the prolific photographer Martin Parr, whose distinctive and radical portraits explore social class and leisure in the north of England in the 1980s, and multidisciplinary artist Vinca Petersen, whose work depicts youth and subcultures at the beach in the 1990s. Two new photography books this year explore the unique character of the British beach. In Ferry’s new book, “Twentieth Century Seaside Architecture: Pools, Piers and Pleasure Around Britain’s Coast,” postcards are used to explore how societal and cultural attitudes interacted with the architecture of the British seaside. “I love the mundaneness of these postcards,” she said. “They are historical documents, but are flimsy and throwaway.”