By the middle of the 19th century, one Albert Smith, who had achieved great success with the panoramas of foreign scenes that he had displayed before an eager public in London venues, was conducting a group on a real and rather perilous journey up Mont Blanc, complete with porters carrying quantities of food, alcohol and home remedies, including laudanum.Ī characteristic feature of the founding fathers of organised tours for England’s burgeoning commercial middle classes was moral purpose. The first edition of John Murray’s Handbook for Travellers on the Continent appeared even before the rail line from London made it to Hastings. Needless to say, the arrival of steam boats and then the spread of railways, the first means of mass travel, gave an impetus to the tourist trade that has never, except in times of war, paled.

These crowds were soon swelled by local hawkers offering fake battlefield mementos, and thus began the alternative view of tourism as something indulged in by noisy, greedy, ignorant people, quite unlike oneself. In the summer of 1815, when Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo was making continental Europe once again accessible to the British, Lady Caroline Lamb reported that ‘the great amusement … is to make large parties & go to the field of battle – & pick up a skull or an old shoe or a letter, & bring it home’. Yet surprisingly early, another image began to intrude on this high-minded scene. The grand tour, centred on Italy, that the wealthy British began to undertake in the 17th century provided a pattern that is still in essence followed by many today – think specialised cruises. For at least 250 years it has been applied without stigma to travelling away from home territory for pleasure, interest and cultural exploration rather than work or duty.

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