The Motoring Age: The Automobile and Britain 1896-1939

by PeterThorold (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2003

  $5.85

  At first motoring was a sport, the car a plaything of the rich - think King Edward and Mr Toad. Soon motor transport - its value confirmed many times over in the war - became central to the economy. The automobile became an instrument of civilization and rejuvenated countryside, towns and villages left derelict by agricultural depression. People were released from their grimy cities 'to go rolling out across the moors to the sea'- to Blackpool or Brighton. The car was a symbol of individual liberty for men - and women; it was glamorous and stylish and sexy too. And George Orwell, writing at the very end of the 'motoring age' saw in the new suburbs and towns it had engendered the seeds of a new Britain liberated from class.