This history of holidays gone by will leave you grateful to be living in the jet age | Rachel Cooke

You'll approach queues and cancellations with zen-like calm after learning of the difficulties faced by yesterday's tourists

If holidays are heaven, they're also hell. Cancelled planes, endless queues, scary weather - and then you come home to the washing and, in my case, a ruthless attack by Cydalima perspectalis, AKA box-tree moth caterpillars, on your carefully tended hedges.

Think of the cheese, I tell myself, inhaling a bottle of Ambre Solaire for courage as I pack. But which of us hasn't wondered, as we stand in line for a hire car, if we wouldn't have been better off staying at home?

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