In this remarkable study, Pamela Sambrook rescues from obscurity the contribution of a former member of Napoleon's Imperial Guard to the development of specialist hotels and catering in the formative years of the railway network in England and France. In doing so, she interrogates what lies behind some of Zenon Vantini's very real achievements, legacies and disasters. She asks how far he was driven by his familial background in Elba and his involvement in the political turmoil of early-nineteenth-century France, and to what extent his whole life was known to those around him.
Vantini's extraordinary life encapsulates the change between two very different worlds - the old imperial past and the new age of entrepreneurial risk-taking. Never shaking off his old political loyalties, he believed resolutely that the mobility afforded by railway travel would change Europe fundamentally. In the long view he was a component part in the very early years of an industry which arguably changed England and Europe more than did even his hero, Napoleon. Scholars and casual readers of British and European social history will be fascinated by his story.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
Zenon Vantini grasped the opportunities presented by political and economic developments in nineteenth-century Europe in a truly exemplary fashion. On his native Elba, he encountered the exiled Napoleon, whom he joined for the Hundred Days. Then, having pursued domestic service in Britain, he conceived the idea of catering for railway travellers, via a chain of hotels that encompassed the continent. Vantini's fascinating transnational career is memorably explored by Pamela Sambrook in this engrossing study.
Malcolm Crook, emeritus professor of French History, Keele University
This was a most enjoyable read, highly informative and the book has page turning qualities making it difficult to put down. The excitement of the chase is not immediately apparent, but develops well before Napoleon enters stage left.
Paul Anderton, former Adult Education Tutor, Keele University
Zenon Vantini leased and managed the first railway-owned hotel (at Euston) and the first railway refreshment rooms (at Wolverton). He organised the first continental rail tours ten years before Thomas Cook. Probably no railway pioneer had a more unusual and exotic back-story, yet he is virtually unknown, even to specialist historians. This book fills a significant gap in transport history.
Peter Brown, Transport historian, formerly reviews editor of the Journal of the Railway & Canal Historical Society
The author has written a lively, fully referenced book about a subject who was difficult to research because of the paucity and widely-scattered nature of the sources.
Peter Brown, in Journal of the Railway & Canal Historical Society
Sprache
Verlagsort
Verlagsgruppe
Maße
Höhe: 234 mm
Breite: 156 mm
Dicke: 11 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-0-7188-9576-1 (9780718895761)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Pamela Sambrook is a former museum curator and distinguished researcher into country-house domestic offices and the lives of the servants who worked in them. She has now retired from consultancy to the National Trust, English Heritage, and from teaching.
Chapter 1. Introducing Zenon Vantini, 1797-1870
Part 1: 1825-c.1847. England
Chapter 2. Extravagant Housekeeping
Chapter 3. Changing from Road to Rail
Chapter 4. Birth of Railway Hotels - Euston and Fleetwood
Chapter 5. Dangers of Refreshment Rooms - Wolverton
Chapter 6. Doorstep to France and the North of England
Part 2: c.1843-1860s. France
Chapter 7. Birth of the Foreign Package Holiday
Part 3: 1797-1815, Elba
Chapter 8. Elba, the Vantinis and the Arrival of Napoleon
Chapter 9. Napoleon's Households and Administration
Chapter 10. The Vantinis during the Exile
Chapter 11. To France and Waterloo
Part 4: 1816-1832. Interludes
Chapter 12. You may not believe this
Part 5: 1797-1870. Vantini, a Whole Life
Chapter 13. Zenon's Daughters
Chapter 14. Vantini in Retrospect
