Leisure, culture and the historian: reviewing the first generation of leisure historiography in Britain

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Abstract
A comprehensive and critical review of 15 years or more of scholarly production in the social history of leisure in Britain, c. 1700 to the present, under three headings: the broad chronology or developmental schema suggested by historians, their various and disputed interpretations of the major forces and relationships in modern leisure formation, and an overall assessment of the field and suggestions for future work. The review notes historians' growing appreciation of the complexity of leisure's role in social change and class relationships, their attention to the significance of continuities amid change, and their broadening understanding of cultural dynamics, but argues that the field needs some recharging from more imaginative and theoretically informed approaches to leisure as text, discourse and performance.

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