Everyone has been on a holiday at least once in their lives; whether that holiday

was a jaunt to a foreign country, or a roadtrip up to see the grandparents is

irrelevant, as the very core of the matter remains the same. On holiday, people
change. The same handful of habits become difficult to deal with, and if one is
spending a prolonged amount of time with these people on holiday, then it might
cease to be as relaxing as one would expect.

There is a cultural stereotype about British tourists on holiday that has become
immortalized in pop culture: that of the British tourist who visits almost
exclusively hot countries, lumbers along from stall to stall buying kitschy
souvieners, drinks everything that they can find, and thus makes a nuisance of
themselves to the locals. This appears to be the view that other British people
have about their fellow men on holiday. Living in a hot country invites the worst of
the worst.

That being said, the very idea of a holiday is to enjoy oneself and have fun, and
this is where the poem Postcard from a Travel Snob comes in.

What is the point of visiting an island for cultural value and cultural value only? Is
there such a thing as a better holiday?

This phenomenon of British people travelling abroad is not wholly new or exciting;
in the 1800s, it was considered the height of polite society and social standing to
go on what was known as the Grand Tour; a holiday all around Europe, mostly
taking place in the crumbling cities of Venice, and the distant reaches of Germany.
Poets such as Byron and Shelley wrote some of their best works on a Grand Tour,
and have been immortalized in those countries by means of plaques and holidays
to their brilliance. This is the same sort of idea that Postcard from a Travel Snob
operates on: a Grand Tour, taking place when the rest of the uncultured world is
visiting hot countries just to have fun.

Summary

The poem is written in four stanzas of four lines each, with uneven rhyming; in the
first stanza, the rhyme follows the pattern of ABAC, in the second it is DEFE, the
third GHGI, and the fourth JKJK; it is only the last stanza that has both sets of lines
rhyming.

It takes place in a resort town, and tells the story of a travel snob who is writing
a postcard to someone unspecified about how her holiday is superior to everyone
elses holiday, and how it is helping her to enrich and brighten her life. It is a
short, but humourous, look at the vanity of people, the natural competitiveness of
people, and the ease of pretending to be who you might not wholly be. It also
forms part of the GCSE pack of poems, which are a group of poems that occur in
GCSE English exams.

Breakdown Analysis

I do not wish that anyone were here.

This place is not a holiday resort
With karaoke nights and pints of beer
For drunken tourist types - perish the thought.

Immediately, the poem starts off with a rather controversial line - I do not wish
that anyone were here. Although this is not wholly the case in all times, most
people enjoy the idea of holidays because of the close proximity to other people;
it is very easy to plan a holiday with ones family and to have a shared experience
that you can talk about in the years to come, but the narrator, here, goes against
the grain by stating that they do not wish that anyone were here. It immediately
sets the tone for the rest of the poem; if the narrator doesnt wish to share the
experience with anyone, then it implies that they would really just prefer to be
alone, which is ironic, in a holiday, particularly a holiday abroad in a hot country,
as it would be impossible to find a single place where you are wholly alone. It is
also ironic that the narrator is writing this sentence with the aim of posting the
postcard to someone else - perhaps she is actually lonely, but not really sure how
to react to this knowledge? Whether or not that is the case has yet to be seen, but
it very well could be, considering the way the poem is titled.

This place is not a holiday resort / With karaoke nights and pints of beer / For
drunken tourist types - perish the thought.

Once more, note the fact that the narrator is building up the place that they are
visiting not by its merits, but by its absences; the holiday that she is on seems
rather sad, because she is not speaking about the wonderful things that she is
viewing, or the places that she has gone, but why, precisely, this place is superior
to other places, which really just makes it seem as though shes not having a
single iota of fun. When she points out that its not a holiday resort, it makes one
think of relaxation; the fact that she says that it isnt this brings to mind a hostel
in the middle of the countryside, where to get to and leave from places is
immensely difficult. Immediately, the holiday that she is writing about doesnt
seem as enjoyable as one would expect, but rather something that is being done
out of a sense of being better than everyone else; it is not a holiday in the
strictest of terms, but a holiday of superiority, a holiday where she must be the
ultimate holidayer, educated and clever and above all the trappings of fun.

The fact that she mentions these absences, however, speaks of experiences on
other holidays, and the reader can make the argument that the absences is what
she has noticed, and therefore what she misses on holiday, but this would be a
feat to explain in an analysis; it makes sense, though, to notice the missing
trappings of stereotypical holidays.

This is a peaceful place, untouched by man -

Not like your seaside-town-consumer-hell.
Im sleeping in a local farmers van -
Its great. Theres not a guest house or hotel

Once more, the specific focus on how peaceful it is, how it is untouched by man,
seems a little bit like she herself is trying to convince herself of the value of the
holiday that she has been on. It is not, therefore, a holiday that she herself is
enjoying as a holiday, but as an educational experience which elevates her above
all other people, she finds it enjoyable; this brings to mind the idea that the
woman herself doesnt really visit places for fun, but on an every growing quest
for enlightenment and further knowledge, and above all, a competitive streak that
pushes her to try to be better than anyone else, more enlightened, more
educational, more sensible than anyone else. From the description of the holiday
that we are given, we can surmise that it is, perhaps, not quite as interesting as
she makes it out to be - after all, she says that it is a peaceful place, that it is
untouched by man, which means that there are very few facilities and home
comforts, and thus cannot be very relaxing if she is going around and trying to get
the most basic of needs sorted out.

Notice the fact that she mentions a seaside-town-consumer-hell. It seems a little

bit of a harsh statement, considering that seaside town resorts are generally very
relaxing, whereas the holiday she is on seems like it would be very taxing and
very unpleasant. She says as much when she comments that she is sleeping in a
local farmers van - anyone who has slept in a car for any duration of time knows
that it is hardly an experience that one would repeat if they didnt have to. The
ensuing its great seems very transparent, an attempt to make her life seem a
little bit better in comparison to everything else that is happening around her. She
continues to justify this by stating that there is not a guest house or hotel / within
a hundred miles.

Within a hundred miles. Nobody speaks

English (apart from me, and rest assured,
Im not your sun-and-sangria-two-weeks-
Small-minded-package-philistine-abroad).

Again, this does not seem like a particularly enjoyable holiday, or a particularly
enjoyable letter; so far, shes mentioned that she is sleeping in a farmers van, in
a place that is untouched by man (which, unlike the idea of the countryside,
seems to imply that there are very few facilities at ones beck and call, and living
in the countryside alone brings its own set of problems), and that there is nothing
close to her within a hundred miles. She mentions the idea of a guest house or
hotel, but there doesnt seem to be anything, or nothing that we can infer from
the postcard; there are no particularly pretty sights that she mentions, no art
galleries that she has visited; it seems to be an isolated place in the middle of
nowhere, and her holiday appears to be spent writing postcards about the
absence of facilities to be found within the place that she is visting.

To add to that, she says that nobody speaks English (apart from me), which
makes it quite a lonely holiday as well, and brings additional difficulties into play;
it is very complicated to try and enjoy oneself on a holiday when there is no-one
to talk to, which could explain why the narrator is writing postcards instead of
exploring the place that she is so bravely holidaying in.

That being said, notice that the postcards language does not veer away from the
fact that she has apparently accomplished something for holidaying in the place
here; that she has done something that should be admired, and spoken about. To
the discerning reader, it hardly seems like the case, but the narrator is wholly
convinced of her own brilliance at holidaying in a place where nobody speaks
English, where there are very few amenities, if any, and where she ends up
sleeping in a farmers van. To the reader, it doesnt seem like a holiday in the very
sense of the word, but her pride in what she is doing is absolutely mesmerizing.

Notice that she mentions that she is not your sun-and-sangria-two-weeks-small-

minded-package-philistine-abroad), which, aside from being a run-on sentence,
doesnt really do much to set her aside from the general population; it seems like
that would be a far more enjoyable holiday than the one she is writing about (it is
left up to the reader to decide if she is writing about the holiday to make herself
feel better, or if she is genuinely enjoying it; I err on the side of writing to make
herself feel better). That said, the point is that we have no genuine idea of what
sort of person the narrator is, aside from boring and overbearing, and that doesnt
really do much in terms of writing.

When youre as multi-cultural as me,

Your friends become wine conoisseurs, not drunks.
Im not a BRitish tourist in the sea;
Im an anthropologist in trunks.

The last stanza takes a tongue-in-cheek approach to the rest of the poem; once
again, the narrator brags that when youre as multi-cultural as me, and talks
about how her friends are wine connoisseurs, not drunks - which could be a little
bit of a dig at the idea of the cultured versus the unctultured in Britain, even
when their lives and their mannerisms are nearly the same, or just about. She
carries this idea to the end of the poem, where she states that she is not a British
tourist in the sea; Im an anthropologist in trunks. - an anthropologist being
someone who studies people for a living.
Historical Analysis

Sophie Hannah is a British novelist and poetess. SHe was born in Manchester,
England, and published her first book of poems at the age of 24, and in 2004, she
was named one of the POetry Book Societys Next Generation poets, and is
considered one of the best poets alive today. Aside from that, she is the author of
a book for children, as well as the crime series WAterhouse and Zailer, some
novels of which have had television adaptations on the drama Case Sensitive.
She was also Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Cambridge between 1997 to
1999, as well as a junior researcher at Oxford between 1999 and 2001. She lives
in Cambridge with her husband and two children.