The Roadhouse Comes to Britain examines how the American idea of the roadhouse, a place of gangsterism, prostitution, gambling and booze was translated by the process of Americanisation in Britain into a country club for the newly motorised. English roadhouses such as the Ace of Spades and the Thatched Barn (pictured) provided 24 hour entertainment, swimming, dining and dancing on a massive scale.
Rene Cutforth recalled:
'There was more champagne than bitter drunk at the Ace of Spades but, all the same, it was considerably unbuttoned for the period: almost anybody could get in there so long as he had his hair appropriately slicked back… with perhaps a little Ronald Colman moustache, a single breasted flannel jacket, a pair of not too outrageous plus fours'
Here are three good reviews - all bad reviews have been suppressed by the site administrator ....
From the American Historical Review
DAVID W. GUTZKE and MICHAEL JOHN LAW. The Roadhouse Comes to Britain: Drinking, Driving and Dancing, 1925–1955. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. Pp. viii, 181. $114.00.
As the title suggests, this elegantly written book examines a shortlived and largely forgotten form of leisure that came to Britain in the interwar years and emerged alongside multiple other types of pleasure in that period. The roadhouse was a popular destination for the elite outside of urban centers, especially London. Facilitated by the expansion of car ownership and the proliferation of road networks in Britain after World War I, the roadhouse was a place to drink, dance, and transgress the boundaries of gender and sexuality.
As David W. Gutzke and Michael John Law suggest, the roadhouse was an American import that was part of the interwar Americanization of Britain. Nevertheless, the British roadhouse was a hybridized form of its U.S. counterpart, which emerged in response to Prohibition and resembled a speakeasy. There was no Prohibition in Britain, and many out-of-work American bartenders found employment in Britain. The Roadhouse Comes to Britain is an account of the way the roadhouse crossed the Atlantic and evolved into a less risque form that appealed to an elite consumer base with a different set of drinking rules.
British drinking culture transformed in the first decades of the twentieth century. Breweries spent large amounts of money creating lounges in their pubs that would appeal to wealthier patrons and would also model elite behavior to working-class drinkers. In the lounge, customers sat at tables, ordered drinks from waiters, and drank moderately. The new pubs added indoor lavatories, dancing spaces, restaurants, and rooms for indoor sports meant to appeal to the new female consumer. While pubs in Britain aimed to reform working-class drinking, roadhouse proprietors did not. Instead, roadhouses created spaces with unrestricted drinking hours and more sophisticated forms of entertainment and targeted the fashionable and wealthy.
The seven chapters of the volume begin by exploring the prehistory of the roadhouse in Britain. The precursors were often tearooms and petrol stations that added facilities for dining and dancing, and a diversion such as a swimming pool or even a zoo. As proprietors added amenities, these sites developed into more sophisticated roadhouses. Another antecedent was the river club, a chic night venue that featured visiting celebrities and cabarets and attracted the fashionable elite.
The development of the roadhouse in interwar Britain was facilitated by the development of road networks and the expansion of car ownership. Roadhouses in the U.S., on the other hand, developed largely in response to Prohibition, the emancipation of women, shifting courtship rituals, and greater mobility. Roadhouses became dens of illicit drinking, narcotics, and transgressive sexual relationships. These elements crossed the Atlantic and infiltrated the culture of London’s exclusive nightclubs, attracting those in search of what Judith R. Walkowitz called a “hedonistic action environment” (39). Many of these same customers became roadhouse clientele. Roadhouses provided unlimited drinking around the clock. Yet roadhouses also provided swimming pools and lidos for sunbathing, sports, and gymnastics, promoted as part of the emphasis on health and exercise in the interwar years.
While car ownership increased in the interwar years, most drivers lived in and around London. Most roadhouses were in the home counties, as the development of an arterial network of roads from the center of the metropole made travel to the rural suburbs easy. As mass production reduced the price of cars, ownership increased among the middle classes, who in turn became roadhouse customers.
To mediate British nostalgia and American modernity, roadhouse proprietors chose their names carefully as either consciously modern, like the Ace of Spades, or, consciously old, like Hilden Manor. Most prestigious roadhouses melded both ideas, incorporating modern facilities, such as cocktail bars and swimming pools, and maintaining a mock-Tudor exterior. Thus, the interior of the roadhouse was an Americanized and modern establishment that mixed jarringly with its faux old-British exterior.
British roadhouses were less transgressive than their American counterparts but were publicly perceived as iniquitous and portrayed as such in literature and film. Numerous interwar novels featured the roadhouse as central to tales of mystery, money, and romance. Yet these popular venues of the interwar years had all but disappeared by the 1950s. Heightened competition in the leisure sector as well as petrol rationing (until 1950) made roadhouses less appealing, as did their focus on a narrow so- cial sector of clientele. After what came to be known as the “people’s war” and the “people’s peace,” this kind of segregated pleasure was no longer in fashion.
This slim volume tells the story of the rise and fall of a little-known form of pleasure. In doing so, it represents a welcome addition to the literature on middle-class and elite leisure in interwar Britain. The authors do not challenge the Americanization argument about interwar Brit- ish culture, but they do offer a degree of complexity by emphasizing the notion of hybridization. Indeed, the authors point out that British roadhouse proprietors never visited the American counterpart but rather created their own version of it from images formed in literature and film. One of the great strengths of the volume is the richness of the numerous illustrations and the use of novels, short stories, films, plays, roadhouse newsreels, and newspaper and magazine articles. The sources make this a compelling account of the short life of the roadhouse as well as a significant and overlooked part of interwar domestic tourism and the role of the car in the development of middle-class leisure. This is a highly readable volume that will be very useful in the classroom. The book will also appeal to a wide audience, including scholars of twentieth-century British and American popular culture.
SANDRA TRUDGEN DAWSON
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
From CHOICE
“This interesting and important study adds significantly to the historical and anthropological literature on alcohol and drinking spaces in society. Historians Gutzke (Missouri State Univ.) and Law (Univ. of Westminster, UK) explore the popularity of roadhouses in Britain in the early 20th century. Glorified in Hollywood films and literature, the roadhouse became an iconic symbol of US modernity and popular culture. Spurred by suburbanization and the increasing mobility that accompanied the dawn of automobiles, roadhouses offered urban elites and wealthy suburbanites liminal and clandestine drinking spaces that possessed a complex character of glamour, danger, respectability, notoriety, and sexual dalliance. British high society, especially around London, embraced roadhouses as a symbol of American leisure and transformed them into uniquely British spaces. The authors compare and contrast British and US roadhouses to show the former's transatlantic, Anglo-American character. US bartenders who fled to Britain during Prohibition helped augment the creolized character of these drinking spaces. The British roadhouse was a byproduct of mobility, which changed the meaning of leisure for wealthy Londoners. Roadhouses were so deeply ingrained in the romantic imagination of British high society during the interwar years that they helped define a generation.
Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries.” –
This fascinating book offers a vivid insight into a neglected subject of the interwar period. But why investigate a phenomenon numbering less than 80 establishments in all its guises? Gutzke and Law argue that they were a significant component in the transformation of leisure in the 1930s, that, at their peak, ‘roadhouses, powered by increasingly extensive automobility, delivered a new form of leisure that combined a contemporary obsession with exercise, the outdoors and the exotic with West End entertainment. Their remote situation provided the locus for actual and literary transgressions as well as societal concerns about anonymity and wider class mixing. Although loosely based on an American archetype, roadhouses combined English architectural manners with Americanized popular culture prevalent in Britain in the decade before the Second World War’ (p.13). It is a case very well made. TIM HOLT
www.bloomsbury.com/author/michael-john-law/
www.bloomsbury.com/us/the-roadhouse-comes-to-britain-9781474294492/
Rene Cutforth recalled:
'There was more champagne than bitter drunk at the Ace of Spades but, all the same, it was considerably unbuttoned for the period: almost anybody could get in there so long as he had his hair appropriately slicked back… with perhaps a little Ronald Colman moustache, a single breasted flannel jacket, a pair of not too outrageous plus fours'
Here are three good reviews - all bad reviews have been suppressed by the site administrator ....
From the American Historical Review
DAVID W. GUTZKE and MICHAEL JOHN LAW. The Roadhouse Comes to Britain: Drinking, Driving and Dancing, 1925–1955. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. Pp. viii, 181. $114.00.
As the title suggests, this elegantly written book examines a shortlived and largely forgotten form of leisure that came to Britain in the interwar years and emerged alongside multiple other types of pleasure in that period. The roadhouse was a popular destination for the elite outside of urban centers, especially London. Facilitated by the expansion of car ownership and the proliferation of road networks in Britain after World War I, the roadhouse was a place to drink, dance, and transgress the boundaries of gender and sexuality.
As David W. Gutzke and Michael John Law suggest, the roadhouse was an American import that was part of the interwar Americanization of Britain. Nevertheless, the British roadhouse was a hybridized form of its U.S. counterpart, which emerged in response to Prohibition and resembled a speakeasy. There was no Prohibition in Britain, and many out-of-work American bartenders found employment in Britain. The Roadhouse Comes to Britain is an account of the way the roadhouse crossed the Atlantic and evolved into a less risque form that appealed to an elite consumer base with a different set of drinking rules.
British drinking culture transformed in the first decades of the twentieth century. Breweries spent large amounts of money creating lounges in their pubs that would appeal to wealthier patrons and would also model elite behavior to working-class drinkers. In the lounge, customers sat at tables, ordered drinks from waiters, and drank moderately. The new pubs added indoor lavatories, dancing spaces, restaurants, and rooms for indoor sports meant to appeal to the new female consumer. While pubs in Britain aimed to reform working-class drinking, roadhouse proprietors did not. Instead, roadhouses created spaces with unrestricted drinking hours and more sophisticated forms of entertainment and targeted the fashionable and wealthy.
The seven chapters of the volume begin by exploring the prehistory of the roadhouse in Britain. The precursors were often tearooms and petrol stations that added facilities for dining and dancing, and a diversion such as a swimming pool or even a zoo. As proprietors added amenities, these sites developed into more sophisticated roadhouses. Another antecedent was the river club, a chic night venue that featured visiting celebrities and cabarets and attracted the fashionable elite.
The development of the roadhouse in interwar Britain was facilitated by the development of road networks and the expansion of car ownership. Roadhouses in the U.S., on the other hand, developed largely in response to Prohibition, the emancipation of women, shifting courtship rituals, and greater mobility. Roadhouses became dens of illicit drinking, narcotics, and transgressive sexual relationships. These elements crossed the Atlantic and infiltrated the culture of London’s exclusive nightclubs, attracting those in search of what Judith R. Walkowitz called a “hedonistic action environment” (39). Many of these same customers became roadhouse clientele. Roadhouses provided unlimited drinking around the clock. Yet roadhouses also provided swimming pools and lidos for sunbathing, sports, and gymnastics, promoted as part of the emphasis on health and exercise in the interwar years.
While car ownership increased in the interwar years, most drivers lived in and around London. Most roadhouses were in the home counties, as the development of an arterial network of roads from the center of the metropole made travel to the rural suburbs easy. As mass production reduced the price of cars, ownership increased among the middle classes, who in turn became roadhouse customers.
To mediate British nostalgia and American modernity, roadhouse proprietors chose their names carefully as either consciously modern, like the Ace of Spades, or, consciously old, like Hilden Manor. Most prestigious roadhouses melded both ideas, incorporating modern facilities, such as cocktail bars and swimming pools, and maintaining a mock-Tudor exterior. Thus, the interior of the roadhouse was an Americanized and modern establishment that mixed jarringly with its faux old-British exterior.
British roadhouses were less transgressive than their American counterparts but were publicly perceived as iniquitous and portrayed as such in literature and film. Numerous interwar novels featured the roadhouse as central to tales of mystery, money, and romance. Yet these popular venues of the interwar years had all but disappeared by the 1950s. Heightened competition in the leisure sector as well as petrol rationing (until 1950) made roadhouses less appealing, as did their focus on a narrow so- cial sector of clientele. After what came to be known as the “people’s war” and the “people’s peace,” this kind of segregated pleasure was no longer in fashion.
This slim volume tells the story of the rise and fall of a little-known form of pleasure. In doing so, it represents a welcome addition to the literature on middle-class and elite leisure in interwar Britain. The authors do not challenge the Americanization argument about interwar Brit- ish culture, but they do offer a degree of complexity by emphasizing the notion of hybridization. Indeed, the authors point out that British roadhouse proprietors never visited the American counterpart but rather created their own version of it from images formed in literature and film. One of the great strengths of the volume is the richness of the numerous illustrations and the use of novels, short stories, films, plays, roadhouse newsreels, and newspaper and magazine articles. The sources make this a compelling account of the short life of the roadhouse as well as a significant and overlooked part of interwar domestic tourism and the role of the car in the development of middle-class leisure. This is a highly readable volume that will be very useful in the classroom. The book will also appeal to a wide audience, including scholars of twentieth-century British and American popular culture.
SANDRA TRUDGEN DAWSON
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
From CHOICE
“This interesting and important study adds significantly to the historical and anthropological literature on alcohol and drinking spaces in society. Historians Gutzke (Missouri State Univ.) and Law (Univ. of Westminster, UK) explore the popularity of roadhouses in Britain in the early 20th century. Glorified in Hollywood films and literature, the roadhouse became an iconic symbol of US modernity and popular culture. Spurred by suburbanization and the increasing mobility that accompanied the dawn of automobiles, roadhouses offered urban elites and wealthy suburbanites liminal and clandestine drinking spaces that possessed a complex character of glamour, danger, respectability, notoriety, and sexual dalliance. British high society, especially around London, embraced roadhouses as a symbol of American leisure and transformed them into uniquely British spaces. The authors compare and contrast British and US roadhouses to show the former's transatlantic, Anglo-American character. US bartenders who fled to Britain during Prohibition helped augment the creolized character of these drinking spaces. The British roadhouse was a byproduct of mobility, which changed the meaning of leisure for wealthy Londoners. Roadhouses were so deeply ingrained in the romantic imagination of British high society during the interwar years that they helped define a generation.
Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries.” –
This fascinating book offers a vivid insight into a neglected subject of the interwar period. But why investigate a phenomenon numbering less than 80 establishments in all its guises? Gutzke and Law argue that they were a significant component in the transformation of leisure in the 1930s, that, at their peak, ‘roadhouses, powered by increasingly extensive automobility, delivered a new form of leisure that combined a contemporary obsession with exercise, the outdoors and the exotic with West End entertainment. Their remote situation provided the locus for actual and literary transgressions as well as societal concerns about anonymity and wider class mixing. Although loosely based on an American archetype, roadhouses combined English architectural manners with Americanized popular culture prevalent in Britain in the decade before the Second World War’ (p.13). It is a case very well made. TIM HOLT
www.bloomsbury.com/author/michael-john-law/
www.bloomsbury.com/us/the-roadhouse-comes-to-britain-9781474294492/
