In between the wars, a Bradshaw's was an essential guide
during a golden age of rail travel,
when glamorous locomotives travelled at world record speed.
I'm using a 1930s edition to explore a discernibly modern era of mass
consumption, when Art Deco cinemas and dancehalls entertained millions,
while industrial Britain was thrown into unemployment and poverty,
and storm clouds gathered across the Channel.
My railway journey continues, exploring the south west of England.
On this leg, I'll discover how the region became a haven
for holiday-makers, authors and political refugees
in the turbulent times of my 1936 guidebook.
I'll experience a novel form of 1930s transport...
With the wind and a spring tide, it can get quite choppy.
..express myself via modern dance...
Into the briny water!
..and take the plunge.
It really is a lovely feeling, sea bathing without seaweed,
or jellyfish, or waves.
On this journey,
I've toured the holiday hotspots of Cornwall at St Ives and Newquay.
My route will take me into Devon, via Plymouth and Paignton,
before heading further east to Bath and finishing on Salisbury Plain.
Today, I begin at Bodmin.
In search of Art Deco attractions, I'll make stops at Plymouth
and Ivybridge. I'll end at Totnes.
My journey continues in Cornwall, approaching Bodmin,
which according to the guidebook gives its name to a large moor,
on which is the highest peak in the county, Brown Willy, 1,376ft.
That notorious piece of high ground
can give rise to freak torrential rain, a phenomenon
so dangerous that only the most inexperienced or foolhardy
would venture out in a desolate place,
where it's claimed men's deeds can be as foul as the weather.
Bodmin is the only Cornish town recorded in the Domesday Book.
But today, it's the moorland to the northeast which draws me.
In the same year as my Bradshaw's Guide was issued,
the author Daphne du Maurier published Jamaica Inn,
a Gothic novel set against the dramatic backdrop of Bodmin Moor.
The mysterious coaching house at the heart of the book still exists
and Alan Jackson is its landlord.
Alan. Hi.
What a pleasure. Michael. Good to see you.
Now, this is not what I expected, with its pretty flowers
and people enjoying their drinks out here, with its fearsome reputation.
How old is the inn? Well, it was built in 1750
when the stagecoaches started running from Bodmin to
Launceston for the first time and it was extremely bleak then.
As we understand it,
there were no other buildings anywhere in the area.
Of course, Daphne du Maurier
describes that in her book wonderfully.
Du Maurier's novel opens with the heroine, Mary Yellan, beginning
a new life with relatives, the proprietors of the Jamaica Inn.
Alan, you have the distinction of
being the landlord of the Jamaica Inn,
but in Daphne du Maurier's novel, who was the landlord?
Oh, technically, you could say my predecessor.
She called him Joss Merlyn. Some of the descriptions she gave of him
in her book were quite remarkable, a pretty evil man.
She describes that he did a lot of smuggling, which is
the minor part of his misdeeds.
He was out robbing, he was out killing,
he was just about doing everything, according to Daphne du Maurier.
What truth do you think there really was about the smuggling
in these parts?
Oh, without doubt, there was smuggling going on and of course,
when she wrote the book, she added an extra dimension to it
by making up that the ships were lured onto the coast
and the sailors that were trying to get ashore were murdered.
That was all fiction.
As the novel unfolds, out on the moors,
Mary discovers the extent of the smugglers' crimes.
Hello, Kate. I'm Michael. Hello, Michael.
Lovely to meet you. Welcome to Bodmin Moor.
I'm meeting Dr Kate Montague from the University of Exeter
to explore Daphne du Maurier's inspiration.
Kate, today, it's not easy to imagine the moor
when the rain's coming down and the mist and so on.
This can be a pretty bleak place. It can be very bleak.
You can see the sort of rugged landscape.
We're in Daphne du Maurier country here.
I think this is what she loved about Cornwall as well.
It throws up all this sort of grey, dark imagery.
And how does Jamaica Inn get into it.
She visited Bodmin Moor throughout her life.
The first time, she got lost,
on a rainy November night with her friend, Foy Quiller-Couch.
They became completely disorientated
and the only way they were able to find their way back to
Jamaica Inn, where they were staying,
was to let the horses intuitively lead them back there.
And what impact did that have on her imagination? It was enthusing it.
She was reading novels by Robert Louis Stevenson,
in particular Treasure Island,
this is all feeding her imagination around adventure,
pirates and buccaneering,
and intersecting then with the actual local histories around
smuggling and shipwrecking that took place around the coast here.
Daphne du Maurier fell in love with Cornwall
when her family bought a holiday home in Fowey in 1926.
The young author soon moved to live in the county
and used its wild landscape as the setting for her sinister
Gothic romances, including her greatest success,
the psychological thriller Rebecca, which has never been out of print.
But it was Jamaica Inn that first established
Du Maurier as one of the best-loved authors of her generation.
How do you account for its great success?
It comes, I think, again, to her craft as a storyteller.
The atmospheric...
The mood she creates around these really well-rounded plots is
part of her craft and I think her love of Cornwall as well,
just infuse the entire narrative.
I've rejoined the rails to cross into Devon.
I'll make a stop in Plymouth,
so strongly associated with great events in our national past.
Bradshaw's reminds us of the repulse of the Spanish Armada in 1588
and the sailing of the Pilgrims for America
in the ship Mayflower in 1620.
Holiday-makers were attracted by this history,
but they wanted their experience of the sea to be kept within bounds.
The port city of Plymouth has a long history with the Royal Navy.
Her Majesty's naval base, Devonport,
is now the largest operation base in Western Europe.
And at the public park that overlooks the English Channel,
there's further evidence of the area's seafaring past.
Bradshaw's tells me that Plymouth Hoe is a lofty plateau
overlooking the spacious natural harbour of Plymouth Sound.
It's been described as the finest promenade in Europe.
This place is also famous because Sir Francis Drake,
a vice-admiral, heard on the Hoe of the approach of the Spanish Armada.
He was playing bowls at the time.
And with marvellous British sangfroid, he said that he would
finish his game before responding to the attack.
In fact, he had to wait for the tide anyway.
Ah! The story is apocryphal. It's almost certainly not true.
It's a load of...myth.
Plymouth attained city status in 1928 and in the following decade, a
new Art Deco landmark distinguished it as an important seaside centre.
The beautiful Tinside Lido opened on the seafront to serve residents
and visitors looking to participate in one of the
'30s' most fashionable activities.
David Greenwood is manager of the pool today.
David, it is a very, very attractive pool. Dates back to when?
Tinside Lido was build in 1935, it opened in October.
They must have been a much more hardy bunch in the 1930s
because it would have been quite chilly back then.
An attractive design. Who was responsible for that?
The architect who designed the beautiful Art Deco building we
see today was the borough engineer, a man called John Wibberley.
I must say, I'm very impressed. Now, what sort of water is this?
Well, this is saltwater. We bring the water in from the sea.
When the lido was built originally,
it would have just poured in when the tide came up,
but now, we run this like a normal indoor modern swimming pool.
It's open just before the Second World War.
Was this part of a trend of lidos at the time? Very much so.
The trend of having a pier 50 or 100 years earlier moved on to
having a lido as well.
We know there were 300-odd lidos built around the seaside resorts of
the UK, of which this is one of only 12 that
remain in anywhere near like their original condition..
That came as the explosion of people with more leisure time,
with more income and the evolution of public transport
to get them to come and enjoy the sunshine at the seaside.
I suppose people's attitude to the sun
and sun-tanning has changed in this period, too.
People started to enjoy the sunshine and above the changing block,
we can see opposite us, you will see there is the sun terrace
and that's an original feature when this lido was built.
The years between the wars saw a reversal of the Victorian view
that a tan was a sign of low class.
It became associated rather with healthy outdoor activities
and aided by images of bronzed celebrities, like Coco Chanel,
sunbathing became fashionable.
Seaside lidos like Tinside offered an opportunity for sun worship.
Now, not many lidos have survived.
How come this one has?
Well, over time, the usage declined and it actually closed in 1992
and lay unused for quite a number of years, until a local petition got
the support of the City Council and of English Heritage
and the lido was regenerated and renewed and reopened again
in 2003, and has been going from strength to strength ever since.
Now, that has not happened in many places.
Why do you think it's happened in Plymouth?
Because there was a huge local support group.
I don't know many people in the city who don't have a family anecdote
about being taught to swim in these pools
or taking an illicit dip in the winter when it was closed,
but these pools are part of the culture of the city.
When you look down from the top
and you see the beautiful pool with the sparkling water,
the blue sea beyond, you could be anywhere in the world.
It could be the best of Sydney or Rio or the Mediterranean,
but it's here in Plymouth.
The spirit of Sir Francis Drake lives on! Into the briny water!
I should have said the cold, briny water,
cos even on an English summer's day, the water remains stubbornly chilly.
The saltwater is incredibly buoyant.
It feels like floating in the Dead Sea or something.
With the ocean all round us, it really is a lovely feeling -
sea bathing without seaweed, or jellyfish, or waves.
BLOWS WHISTLE
This morning, I'm leaving Plymouth to travel east.
My journey continues in Devon. The 1930s was an era of design.
As we look back on the period,
we conjure those posters with elegant aeroplanes,
ships and locomotives,
culminating in Sir Nigel Gresley's Pacific Class Mallard, introduced
in 1938, possibly the most beautiful steam machine ever constructed.
Architecture did not exist on an island
and was impacted by this obsession with sleek lines,
as I hope to discover when I alight at Ivybridge.
Ivybridge Railway Station is on the main line that connects
Plymouth and Exeter.
The town itself is situated between Dartmoor National Park
and the South Devon coast, which is my destination today.
At the time of my Bradshaw's Guidebook, this stunning landscape
was home to a glamorous new hotel in a rather unusual location.
Giles Fuchs is the co-owner of the Burgh Island Hotel.
Giles, what a wonderful view! Isn't it amazing?
Amazing! What is that white palace over there?
Well, what white palace is correct, built in 1929, it's a house
by Archie Nettlefold, playboy, as his party place away from London,
and his friends used to come down for the summer and not leave.
So he started charging them and it became a hotel.
And it's been a hotel all that time, 90 years.
Periodically cut off from the mainland,
Burgh Island was the perfect escape for the London theatre owner
and film-maker Nettlefold with his fellow bright young things.
Now, what about this contraption? I love it. What is it? I know.
Well, it's for getting through the tide.
This is a causeway, tide comes in and out twice a day,
so sometimes you can walk, sometimes you have to take the sea tractor.
At high tide, the sea tractor is a necessity.
How long have they been using a tractor here?
So the sea tractor was first built in the 1930s.
In those days, it had tank tracks, but the sand, the sea water,
meant that they were constantly failing, so some time, I think, in
the late '30s, they put tyres on it, which is much, much better,
but it's a precarious instrument, especially when the wind's blowing.
Moving forward at a very sedate pace. There have been times when...
The tide comes in from both sides. Yeah.
And if there's also a wind, and a spring tide,
it can get quite choppy.
Hold on to hats, etc. I think we're set fair today.
I think we're OK.
Archie Nettlefold commissioned architect Matthew Dawson to
design him a house in 1927.
With its clean lines and white concrete exterior,
the building that resulted owes much to the fashionable Art Deco
style, which first emerged in Paris in the 1920s
and soon became inextricably linked with the glamour of the age.
We're in the Peacock Bar
and this dome was designed to look like a peacock's plumage,
you can see the feathers, plumes of the peacock, radiating out from the
centre of the dome and this was the centrepiece of the hotel, actually.
What are your favourite Art Deco features?
Well, there are so many, aren't there?
I obviously love this dome, but there are some original pieces,
for instance the radiators,
the mosaic in the pond, as you can see just behind us.
Although from the outside I thought it felt like a palace,
I now feel that it's quite like a ship.
Yes, funny you should say that, there are...
There's lots of readings I've done about the building where
the architect tried to design it as a seagoing steamer.
Like many Art Deco buildings,
the architecture of the hotel celebrated the modern age of ocean
liners and aeroplanes with geometric motifs and streamlined silhouettes.
But the design also took advantage of Burgh Island's singular location.
The Mermaid Pool, Michael. Not at all what I expected.
I was thinking another bit of Art Deco was coming up.
Isn't that superb?
And you can see the bathing platform and the beach,
where they'd sun themselves and swim.
I mean, that really is magical, isn't it?
A wonderful use of the natural features. Yes.
Now, which celebrities were attracted to
this splendid place in the 1930s?
Well, people you may have heard of, Noel Coward, Coco Chanel.
Just behind my left shoulder, you'll see a beach house where
Agatha Christie famously wrote some of her novels,
including And Then There Were None, Evil Under The Sun,
which was based here and the island is mentioned
and the murder happened just around the headland.
Um, you clearly have a passion for Art Deco, is that right?
Yes, such a huge change from the Victorian and Edwardian era
and those Gothic buildings to what is the straight lines
juxtapositioned with the curves,
so it is a fabulous change in direction.
For the final leg of this journey,
I'm travelling just 12 miles, one stop, along the line to Totnes.
The town is now known for its Bohemian character,
the origins of which can be traced back to the time of my guidebook.
Bradshaw's comments that in the south of Devon,
hundreds of feet above sea level, is the vast expanse of Dartmoor.
Now, the moor and the naval college at Dartmouth
take their name from the River Dart, as does Dartington,
whose medieval hall fell into disrepair.
And in the 1920s, when it was rescued, that constituted
not just the reconstruction of a building, but a cultural revival.
At the time that my Bradshaw's was published,
dictators in Europe were tightening their grip on power.
Free thinkers at home
and abroad sought havens from authoritarianism, in which
they could use art and new ideas to attempt to build a better world.
The 14th century Dartington Hall became one such utopian refuge.
Rhodri Samuel is CEO of the Dartington Hall Trust.
Rhodri, how was it that Dartington Hall was rescued in the 1920s?
Well, it was bought by a remarkable visionary couple called Dorothy
and Leonard Elmhirst. She was one of the most prominent heiresses
and social activists in America,
he was the poor son of a Yorkshire vicar, and they bought this
estate to begin what they called their English Experiment,
where what they called a many-sided life could find expression,
and they were also seeking to have an influence on society at large,
in terms of creating a more just and humane society.
So, what sorts of institutions came into existence here?
Well, they created first of all,
actually, something called Dartington Hall School,
which was one of the most progressive schools in the country.
They believed that the purpose of education was learning by doing.
They didn't have organised forms of discipline
and the curriculum was unbelievably diverse.
What role in the arts did Dartington Hall play?
Well, the arts were always a fundamental
part of the original concept of the many-sided life
and the place attracted major figures in the arts, such
as Yehudi Menuhin, Igor Stravinsky and all sorts of other musicians.
Also, in terms of dance,
Dartington has been a major centre from the 1930s for dance,
hosting characters such as Kurt Jooss, Rudolf Laban,
for whom the Elmhirsts built a dance school here in the 1930s.
A reaction against the strict rules of traditional ballet,
modern dance blossomed between the wars
and Dartington Hall was to become home to
two of its great choreographers, Kurt Jooss and Rudolf Laban.
I'm meeting Dr Sue Smith, director of the charity Dance In Devon.
Sue, could you tell me more about Kurt Jooss and Rudolf Laban?
Mm-hm. Kurt Jooss was a German choreographer.
He was well-known for making dance theatre,
so he used quite strong, dramatic ideas, often political.
What brought him to Dartington Hall?
Well, his work was drawing attention.
He's particularly well-known for making the Green Table.
The Green Table was very controversial
because it was looking at some of the themes around war
and peace negotiation,
and that was the year before Hitler became Chancellor.
It was a dangerous time to be sharing these ideas in the theatre.
And when he was ordered to dismiss his Jewish performers,
the Elmhirsts invited Kurt Jooss to Dartington. And Rudolf Laban?
Rudolf Laban had been one of Kurt Jooss' teachers.
Laban was incredibly important
in the development of European modern dance,
and he himself also had to make a swift exit.
Until the Nazis seized power, Germany had been
one of the great centres of the modern dance movement.
Rudolf Laban had choreographed
a large dance demonstration for the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games,
but Joseph Goebbels banned its performance.
In fear, Laban fled to Dartington,
where he and Kurt Jooss continued their work.
Today, we've brought some local dancers together
and we've been exploring some of the themes from the Green Table,
but also drawing some inspiration from the culture of free thinking
that the Elmhirsts developed here.
Would you like to come and see what we've been doing?
Certainly, thank you.
So, if you're ready, shall we just go for a walk through?
So, off you go.
You see this movement here, this is almost like a mirror,
reflecting the face back at you.
These fingers running down the leg, this is the moment of fleeing,
so the hands are people running.
And this movement, this open movement, this is referring to
freedom of expression, which was encouraged here at Dartington.
And then, the turn into the body, just showing the care and refuge.
And then they find each other's hands and then off they go.
A moment of solidarity, as they walk on ahead...
Mm. ..leaving their homes behind. It's very moving.
The choreography of Laban and Jooss emphasised expressive movements and
dance that was open to everyone, so even I should be able to have a go.
OK, so come into the line here.
And then the line will start moving
and the first movement will be this, the hand and the mirror.
OK. OK?
VIOLIN PLAYS
Daphne du Maurier's Gothic novel Jamaica Inn,
a last hurrah for Romanticism, sits oddly in the 1930s -
a decade dominated by unemployment, but also by sleek, modern Art Deco
and the rise of the dictators abroad.
Britons might lose themselves in an adventure book,
but there was no escaping political reality.
At least Kurt Jooss and Rudolf Laban fled Nazism, the first of
a wave of immigrants who did so much to enrich life in the democracies.
Next time, I ride a railway
used by the creator of the modern murder mystery...
Agatha Christie, she did write about trains quite a lot.
They were centrepieces to stories.
I mean, Murder On The Orient Express is probably the most famous example.
..discover an agricultural robot...
It's the most extraordinary thing I've seen in a long time.
..and receive a floral tribute.
I'd like to start off by popping in one of our beautiful Dianthus.
Thank you very much. That's all right.
Obviously a spy had told you what colour I was wearing today!