Nudism in a Cold Climate is a richly illustrated book that examines the
a particular phenomenon of social nudism in mid-20th century Britain
century, an island nation renowned for its lack of sunshine and its attitudes
reserved social. Structured in three interdependent phases, the reader
first discovered the movement at its genesis, in the 1920s, when the
nudism was synonymous with vegetarianism, intellectualism and utopianism. This
Emerging culture proliferated in the postwar period, with an increasingly
wider amateur clubs and governing organisations, as well as
high-circulation publications and photographers defying censorship. Finally,
Annebella Pollen examines the movement's redefinition as naturism, its
cultural battles and its struggle to survive in the context of evolution
of sexual liberation in the 1960s. Unadorned bodies
were the main campaign tool of the photographic propaganda of the
British naturism. They drew attention to the cause and stimulated
sales of publications, but they also regularly attracted opprobrium
of the public. The evolution of the visual culture of naturism thus offers a view
microcosm of British moral, legal and aesthetic transformations
in a period of rapid social change, revealing the evolution of
perspectives on health and sex, gender and ethnicity, pleasure and
power.
