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A blue-domed, dolphin-decorated bathing hut still stands on a tiny beach near
Osborne on the Isle of Wight, a relic of Queen Victoria’s stately dips in the
sea. Before Victoria’s time, however, respectable Europeans left the beach to
workers: crabbers, cockle diggers, collectors of lava, fishermen and smugglers.
Lena Lencek and Gideon Bosker reveal in The Beach how it became,
littorally and literally, the dream place. (Was it the hydrodynamic bathing
suits that did it?) An enjoyable history, now out in paperback. Published by
Pimlico, £10, ISBN 071266596X.