Michael John Law
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Not Like Home: American Visitors to Britain in the 1950s
McGill-Queen's Academic Press (2019)

Late on Monday night on 5 April 1954, Juanita Stott and her neighbor India Ramsey drove from their small clapperboard homes in Chapel Hill, North Carolina to Seaboard Station in Raleigh to wait for the ‘Silver Meteor’ train service to New York.  Stott was 48 years old, single, a Methodist who worked as a registrar at the nearby North Carolina State College.  The train was due at 1. 25 a.m. but was running late on the slow journey from Miami. This was the start of an adventure, a vacation in Europe, an event of significance. Stott’s friends marked it as such.  Despite the late hour Bill Sandine, the president of her Sunday School, and Everette McDonald, another member of her church, were there to see her off.  They had brought her two precious rolls of 36-exposure color film for her camera as a leaving present...


Picture
Not Like Home will be published by McGill-Queen's Academic Press in August 2019 

https://www.mqup.ca/not-like-home-products-9780773558847.php

The 1950s was a key decade in Anglo-American relations and when Americans of all classes came to Britain in large numbers for the first time.  Not Like Home uses the diaries and memoirs of 'ordinary' American visitors to explore their encounters with Britain and its citizens.  

They found many contrasts with their life in the United States, some aspects were disappointing, some transformative.  The biggest surprise was that Britons were not at all as they appeared in the movies.  

Chapters:


Americans and Britons                                                                                                
Archetypes and Representations                                                       
Demographics of American Visitors                                                                  
Selling Britain’s Heritage and History                                                               
Crossing the Atlantic                                                                                                     
Destinations and Travel in Britain                                                                      
Accommodating American Visitors                                                                    
Encountering the British – USAF Teenagers                                                
Encountering the British – Trip Reporters                                                    
Asymmetry and Ambiguity
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  • Home
  • About
  • Books and Articles
    • Not Like Home
    • 1938: Modern Britain
    • The Experience of Suburban Modernity
    • 1930s London: The Modern City
    • The Roadhouse Comes to Britain
    • A World Away
    • Journal Articles
  • Download my Thesis
  • Radio/Podcasts
  • Guitars