Description
Book SynopsisIn this remarkable study, Pamela Sambrook rescues from obscurity the contribution of a former member of Napoleon''s Imperial Guard to the development of specialist hotels and catering in the formative years of the railway network in England and France. In doing so, she interrogates what lies behind some of Zenon Vantini''s very real achievements, legacies and disasters. She asks how far he was driven by his familial background in Elba and his involvement in the political turmoil of early-nineteenth-century France, and to what extent his whole life was known to those around him.Vantini''s extraordinary life encapsulates the change between two very different worlds - the old imperial past and the new age of entrepreneurial risk-taking. Never shaking off his old political loyalties, he believed resolutely that the mobility afforded by railway travel would change Europe fundamentally. In the long view he was a component part in the very early years of an industry which arguably changed Eng
Trade ReviewZenon Vantini grasped the opportunities presented by political and economic developments in nineteenth-century Europe in a truly exemplary fashion. On his native Elba, he encountered the exiled Napoleon, whom he joined for the Hundred Days. Then, having pursued domestic service in Britain, he conceived the idea of catering for railway travellers, via a chain of hotels that encompassed the continent. Vantini's fascinating transnational career is memorably explored by Pamela Sambrook in this engrossing study. Malcolm Crook, emeritus professor of French History, Keele University This was a most enjoyable read, highly informative and the book has page turning qualities making it difficult to put down. The excitement of the chase is not immediately apparent, but develops well before Napoleon enters stage left. Paul Anderton, former Adult Education Tutor, Keele University Zenon Vantini leased and managed the first railway-owned hotel (at Euston) and the first railway refreshment rooms (at Wolverton). He organised the first continental rail tours ten years before Thomas Cook. Probably no railway pioneer had a more unusual and exotic back-story, yet he is virtually unknown, even to specialist historians. This book fills a significant gap in transport history. Peter Brown, Transport historian, formerly reviews editor of the Journal of the Railway & Canal Historical Society The author has written a lively, fully referenced book about a subject who was difficult to research because of the paucity and widely-scattered nature of the sources. Peter Brown, in Journal of the Railway & Canal Historical Society
Table of ContentsChapter 1. Introducing Zenon Vantini, 1797-1870 Part 1: 1825-c.1847. England Chapter 2. Extravagant Housekeeping Chapter 3. Changing from Road to Rail Chapter 4. Birth of Railway Hotels - Euston and Fleetwood Chapter 5. Dangers of Refreshment Rooms - Wolverton Chapter 6. Doorstep to France and the North of England Part 2: c.1843-1860s. France Chapter 7. Birth of the Foreign Package Holiday Part 3: 1797-1815, Elba Chapter 8. Elba, the Vantinis and the Arrival of Napoleon Chapter 9. Napoleon's Households and Administration Chapter 10. The Vantinis during the Exile Chapter 11. To France and Waterloo Part 4: 1816-1832. Interludes Chapter 12. You may not believe this Part 5: 1797-1870. Vantini, a Whole Life Chapter 13. Zenon's Daughters Chapter 14. Vantini in Retrospect
