Riding on Rainbows: Blackpool Pleasure Beach and Its Place in British Popular Culture

Blackpool Pleasure Beach is a spectacular national and international phenomenon that deserves the serious attention of historians. Since the 1890s it has evolved into Britain's most visited tourist attraction. Each year, its 42 acres become a vast wonderland of noise, rides (including ten roller coasters), attractions and shows. This cultural and social history examines why the Pleasure Beach has been so successful over such a long period, when rival seaside amusement parks have faltered and fallen by the wayside. It probes what this success means and what it suggests about continuities and changes in British popular culture over the last hectic century.It examines the experiences of the park's visitors and workforce as well as the history of the rides, and pays sustained interest in the planning and design of the park. As the first critical perspective of a major amusement park, this is a book for both the serious historian and general reader. You will find in these pages a study that is as accessible as it is authoritative, offering new interpretations of the changes in leisure, amusement, technology and consumption that helped to transform popular culture and society in twentieth-century Britain.

Table of Contents:
1 Blackpool and the Pleasure Beach2 Creating the Pleasure Beach3 A Modern Amusement Park: the Pleasure Beach between the Wars4 The Post-War Pleasure Beach: New Challenges, New Initiatives5 Customers and Workers6 The Pleasure Beach and the Wider World

About the Author :
John K. Walton is Professor of Social History at the University of Central Lancashire. From November 2007 he will be Professor of Social History in the Institute of Northern Studies at Leeds Metropolitan University. He has worked on the history of the British seaside (especially Blackpool and Whitby) for many years, as well as writing about tourism and resorts in Spain (especially San Sebastian), Belgium, France, the United States (especially Coney Island), and Latin America.He also writes about popular culture, regional history and regional identities, especially in Lancashire and the Basque Country. His books include The Blackpool Landlady (Manchester, 1978); the English Seaside Resort 1750-1914 (Leicester, 1983); Lancashire: a Social History 1558-1939 (Manchester, 1887); Fish and Chips and the British Working Class, 1870-1940 (Leicester, 1992); Blackpool (Edinburgh, 1998); The British Seaside: Holidays and Resorts in the Twentieth Century (Manchester, 2000); and (with Gary Cross), The Playful Crowd: Pleasure Places in the Twentieth Century (New York, 2005).