For more than 60 years it has been an annual fixture for thousands of us, a birthright enjoyed and embraced by the children of modern, pleasure-seeking, throw-away Britain. Precisely when it happened, I couldn’t say, but at some point in the 1950s or 1960s, the trains radiating from the metropolis to the coastal resorts of Clacton-on-Sea, Southend-on-Sea, Bournemouth, Frinton, Brighton and beyond stopped heaving with Londoners.

In their place a whole series of new, hitherto unfamiliar resorts zoomed into the national consciousness, heralded by the tang of aviation fuel and the promise of neverending heat and chilled cerveza . Benidorm, Alicante, Tenerife, Torremolinos and Lanzarote were the new Clactons, Margates and Blackpools; the only difference was, these were drenched in glorious M

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