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GWR books and booklets

Holiday Haunts

Along with the other railway companies at the time the Great Western Railway were understandably keen to promote the varied attractions of the many destinations served by them. To this end, the GWR published a 334 page gazetteer entitled Holiday Haunts on The Great Western Railway, Season 1906. This book proved to be the first of an eventual total of thirty-two editions, the largest extending to no fewer than 1,054 pages, with the final somewhat smaller edition of 688 pages being published in 1947.

The first edition cost 1d (one penny), this had risen to 6d by 1911 but there it stayed until publication ceased in 1947 with the exception of one or two first-war editions which were priced at 3d. There was a short break when no copies were produced between 1917 and 1920 inclusive. From 1923 there was a full coloured frontispiece based on painting illustrating one of the many potential holiday destinations. The basic format remained largely unaltered for its whole life. Divided into geographical sections, each containing photographic plates, articles, maps and other inclusions, adverts large and small, and listings of accommodation. Not all advertised their nightly rates, many choosing instead the rather flexible phrase 'moderate terms'. Some of the descriptions within the adverts are fascinating, offering such luxuries as electric light, running water to all bedrooms, also 'gas fires and boiling rings'. A handful even highlighting the fact that they boasted 'indoor sanitation'. Other facilities and attractions could include good stabling, shooting and hunting nearby, and perhaps bearing witness to the sometimes unreliable nature of cars at the time, 'motor garage with inspection pit'.

~ Illustrated on this page are the front covers of those editions held in our collection ~
~~ Hover over a cover to read the printer's credit from that edition ~~

The rather plain and unexciting cover was replaced for the 1929 edition with a brightly coloured one, more in keeping with other travel books being published by the GWR at the time, although the text within received only minor updates.

The descriptive text was however taken over and completely revised by Maxwell FraserClick or tap to see an advert for the 1930 edition which highlights the rewrite during 1929 ready for the 1930 edition. She then went on to revise one section at a time for each subsequent edition. These editions covered England, Wales, the Channel Islands and the Isle of ManThe many photographs were mostly taken by the company's own photographers from the Engineering Department as their work would take them to all points of the company's realm. The task of eliciting adverts and editing the thousands of entries was truly enormous and involved a great number of people, being a bit like painting the Forth Bridge - as soon as you get to the end it would be almost time to start again. Early print runs recorded on a poster advertising the 1927 edition of Holiday Haunts bear witness to its rise in popularity, 1921 - 40,000, 1922 - 60,000, 1923 - 80,000, 1924 - 100,000, 1925 - 125,000 and 1927 - 175,000. There were understandably gaps of a few years during both wars when the gazeteer was not produced. The 1940 edition which uniquely had a photograph on the front cover, was released in the spring as much of the work involved in its production had already been completed before war intervened. In December 1944 the government agreed to release Maxwell Fraser, who was then on the staff of the Slough Observer, so that she might return to the GWR and resume the task of revising the text of Holiday Haunts. Only one more edition was subsequently published however, being for the 1947 season, before nationalisation brought an end to this long running series of GWR books.

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Maxwell Fraser was the pen name of Dorothy May Fraser. Born in London in 1902, she moved with her family to Slough at the age of six or seven and attended St. Joseph's Convent School there. As well as being responsible for the text within the 'Holiday Haunts' books from 1930 she also wrote several books for the Great Western Railway in the 1930s and had many other travel books published. She married the poet and Welsh scholar Edgar Phillips in 1951 and continued to write under her adopted pen name until 1978.

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Holiday Haunts was also published in hard back cloth-bound form, with gilt lettering, for use in hotels, ships and clubs. These comprised the standard soft back publication which would have been simply glued into a hard casing.

A number of supplementary booklets also carrying the main title of Holiday Haunts were published alongside the main handbook. Amongst these was a short series of booklets specifically covering Southern Ireland and promoting travel to Ireland via Fishguard aboard the GWR's own ferries. These cost 2d and were produced for the seasons 1921 until 1925, from 1926 Southern Ireland was covered in a section within the main handbook. The Irish Free State was established on 6 December 1922 under the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921. It is interesting to read the special information for visitors to Ireland page in the 1924 edition and note that the Emery Walker map of Ireland shows no border.

We have also seen Holiday Haunts Ireland GWR dated 1931 and written by Maxwell Fraser. Sadly we do not know if this was the only edition or whether it was published as part of a series, possibly running from 1930 until 1939.

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British Railways Holiday Haunts

British Railways followed on with their own (almost identical) series of Holiday Haunts. Other than publishing regional editions very little by way of content really changed. In our example from 1959, which is one of five such volumes that year, you would be hard pressed to know it wasn't simply the latest in the GWR series although the area covered has changed slightly of course. There are some noticeable changes in layout however. All the photogravure plates are collected together in one section towards the front and the fold-out map at the back now covers the whole of the rail network. Example train services and fares are a feature and some of the adverts reflect changing holiday tastes with Butlin's camps together with static and touring caravan parks being the most noticeable. One interesting service being offered is the facility to send your car by rail in special vans thereby saving long cross-country journeys, a similar service was also being offered in 1927. The Great Western Railway used to promote the West Country as being akin to Italy, both in shape and climate, and Exmouth is still rather hopefully advertising itself as 'the English Bay of Naples'.

The Dickens Press Holiday Haunts

To complete the story of these books as a railway publication we note that British Railways published their final edition in 1962 after which The Dickens Press took over the title. The first edition, published for the 1963 season, was a single 463 page book covering all the major holiday areas of Britain. Its overall style differed little from the British Railways series, but the price had gone up to 2/6 (half a crown). Two notable differences however were the use of colour plates rather than monochrome, and the maps now showed main roads not railway lines and stations. It is not known when publication ceased, but we know the price had risen to 3/6 by 1967. The Dickens Press also produced the Daily Mail I‑SPY books and one of the staff writers was John Tagholm who regularly contributed to the I-SPY newspaper column under the pseudonym of 'Hawkeye'. He was also responsible for several of the I-SPY booklets themselves and is credited as the editor of these later Holiday Haunts books but had left Dickens Press by the mid 1970s to pursue a career as a television editor and producer.

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GWR Holiday Haunts - Bookmarkers

Also carrying the Holiday Haunts name was a series of six card bookmarkers published from the late 1920s. Each of these carried an illustration of a place of interest taken from the many thousands of possibilities afforded by the gazetteer. On the reverse was a description of that particular destination and the name of the station which served it. All the drawings were by Joseph Pike but only three bore his name, and strangely, in each case it took a different form.

The bookmarkers are known to have been produced in two different sizes with the smaller (6 11⁄16" x 2") thought to be the earlier, and the larger (7 1⁄4" x 2 1⁄8") being more common. Apart from the size both sets look identical from the front but, whilst still retaining the same wording on the back, the spacing is different together with some other minor design differences (the smaller uses a shell rather than a leaf motif, and the word 'Station' is placed above the station name with both these lines being in italics). It is understood that in the 1990s the Reading group of the Great Western Society sold facsimiles of the Devil's Bridge and Vale of Llangollen markers in a slightly longer format (19 x 5.5 cm) with accreditation at the foot.

~ We have been able to collect original examples of all six of the larger sized bookmarkers and they are described below ~
~~ Click or tap on any bookmarker to see it at near life size ~~