The Segals and the seagulls
Considers Jews on holiday. Mathilde Frot is entertained by a joyfully romantic debut novel
Jews by the Seaside: The Jewish Hotels and Guest Houses of Bournemouth
By Pam Fox
Vallentine Mitchell, £19.95 Reviewed by Tony Kushner
Growing up in south Manchester during the 1970s, I was addicted to the NME’s “Rock Family Trees”, which intricately explained how rock bands were related to one another. Pam Fox does this for the Jewish guest houses and hotels of Bournemouth, which, from the late 19th century, provided accommodation – from basic to luxury – for generations of Jews. At one level, her book is an important, detailed, economic history in which Jewish women played a vital role running these remarkable enterprises. It is, however, when the testimonies of British Jews drawn from a variety of backgrounds (including, from the 1930s, refugees from Nazism) is reproduced that this book really comes alive.
Indeed, Fox makes a strong case that the very identities of British Jews can be told through their extended stays in Bournemouth, especially through the “Big Eight” hotels that provided a remarkable 600 rooms between them – The Ambassador; Cumberland; East Cliff Court; East Cliff Manor; Green Park; Langham; Majestic; and Normandie.
(Even within this elite club, the Green Park had a certain “posh” reputation, and was the imagined setting for the old story of an overheard conversation through a bedroom wall: “Wife: Maurice, shall I put on my Dior or Balmain dress? Husband: The Dior. Wife: Shall I put on my blonde or red wig? Husband: Blonde. Wife: Maurice, shall I wear my diamonds or my rubies? Husband: Rubies. But hurry up or we’ll be late for breakfast”!)
The heydays of these hotels were the decades after the Second World War when increasing prosperity and a desire to socialise within a Jewish framework, alongside a mountain of endless food, provided a safe space.
The chapter on food is the longest and it is daunting to consider the reported consumption. Through material produced by the Green Park — which, astonishingly, given what was happening on the Continent, opened its doors as a Jewish hotel in October 1943 — Pam Fox recreates a schedule of meals from the 1950s: tea and biscuits in bed; full breakfast; elevenses; lunch; afternoon tea; a five-course dinner; and refreshments at 10pm (tea, sandwiches and cakes “for those who felt that they could not survive through the night” until the next round of gluttony).
The guests could have everything, and still manage to kvetch: “The food is too hot. The food is too cold. Haven’t you anything smaller?”
As well as valuable social history Fox’s book is a collective biography of British Jews by the seaside, based on hundreds of first-hand accounts. One former guest, John Colvin, recollects his grandmother staying in the Majestic in the 1950s simply for the company: “I suspect that, during the entire holiday, she didn’t even glimpse the sea”. There are neat comparisons with America’s Catskills and Borscht belt, which had a similar rise and fall as a Jewish resort centre. However, for British Jews, there was something extra and very important — being near the sea. My Mancunian family never progressed further than Blackpool when I was a young child, but it had the same attraction: places and spaces where we belonged and could look beyond the shoreline.
Tony Kushner’s latest book is ‘Southampton’s Migrant Past and Present’ published by the Parkes Institute