In the swim

Christopher Woodward dives into the history of the swimming pool and relishes some lengths in the best private pools in the country

- Christopher Woodward

THE 1930s ushered in the Golden Age of swimming in style. Swallow divers had captivated the Paris Olympics in 1924 and Olympians Johnny Weissmuller and Eleanor Holm thrilled in Billy Rose’s Aquacade at the New York World Fair in 1939. Here, London County Council leader Herbert Morrison declared the capital would be a ‘City of Lidos’. The first elasticated swimming costume was launched in 1934. It was a time, as Catherine Horwood wrote in her article Girls Who Arouse Dangerous Passions: Women and Bathing 1900–1939, when opposition to the display of female flesh was overcome by an understanding of the value of sunlight: tanning began in German health spas and, later, on the French Riviera.

I have swum in wild seas and freezing oceans—from the Arctic Circle to, most recently, the 50 miles from Newlyn to the island of Tresco, as well as in countless rivers, including the Thames from Oxford to London. But, in reaction to the current mania for wild swimming, with its muddy chatter of Thermos flasks, Birkenstocks and wellbeing, it seems time to rediscover an age when swimming was a more elegant affair.