Britain: An official handbook > 1956

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BRITAIN: AN OFFICIAL HANDBOOK
the country, and every form of outdoor pursuit from swimming, hiking, cycling
and motoring1 to hunting, shooting and fishing has an enthusiastic following,
though many sports, such as sailing, gliding, and rock-climbing, are practised only
by relatively few keen amateurs. Climatic and physical conditions in Britain afford
few opportunities for ski-ing and mountaineering, but numbers of people go abroad
regularly for these pursuits.
The spread of television has added a vast new audience of indoor spectators to
the crowds who go to watch sporting events and great national occasions. By the
end of October 1955 one out of every three homes had a television set; viewers are
fairly evenly distributed among all sections of the population, irrespective of
income. The number of television licences is increasing rapidly; in the two years
from end-June 1953 to end-June 1955 the number rose by over 2| million (from
2,415,305 104,676,422); by October 1955 it had exceeded 5 million. Some districts,
however, are still outside the regular range of the transmitters (see pp. 403-4).
Television has caused a considerable fall in cinema attendances and has materially
affected leisure habits in many ways. The cinema remains, however, the most
popular form of indoor entertainment outside the home. A third of all adults,
including two-thirds of those under 25 years of age, and one out of two school
children go to the cinema, on average, at least once a week. Attendances at theatres
are much smaller, though most people visit them occasionally. There are only some
400 to 500 theatres in the country, compared with some 4,700 cinemas, yet the
Derby Survey showed that half of the adult population of that town went to the
theatre more than twice a year. About a quarter of the adult population of Derby
sometimes went to concerts, and in the country as a whole there is known to be
an enthusiastic and growing public for concerts, ballet and opera.
Dancing is popular especially with those under 25 years of age. There have been
estimated to be some 450 to 500 ballrooms in Great Britain, and dances and other
social gatherings are also often held in other halls or in club-rooms. The Derby
Survey showed that in that town nearly half the adult population, including 60 per
cent of the men, belonged to a social, sporting or cultural club and that over a third
of them visited such a club at least once a month.
One traditional social rendezvous, the public house, has maintained and even
increased its popularity, although there has been a marked decrease in drunkenness
and in consumption of alcohol per head since the nineteenth century. The public
house now attracts a very wide circle of casual customers (both men and women)
as well as many ‘regulars’, who meet for a drink and a chat, and perhaps to play
some traditional public house game such as darts. A new, and in some ways rival,
feature of urban life, especially in London, is the coffee bar. A characteristic of
many of these coffee bars, which stay open until late at night and are becoming
increasingly popular as a rendezvous for young people, is their modern ddcor. On
the other hand many people, especially the married and the elderly, spend much of
their leisure at home—reading, listening to the radio, viewing television, or pur¬
suing hobbies. The most widespread hobbies are practical, for example, knitting
and needlework for women and gardening for men. The standard of town and
country gardens is high.
A number of people, young and old, find their main free-time interest in some
form of group activity of a serious nature, connected, for example, with the
churches, trade unionism, politics, social welfare and reform, or with cultural
1 There are some six million motor vehicles licensed at the height of summer, of which
over three million are cars and over one million are motor cycles. Many of the cars,
however, are used partly, if not primarily, for business purposes.