This book analyses leisure choice as a complex concept, made more complicated
in later life than at any other time. The author posits that there are many
unanswered questions about the new booming generation of healthy, older
people, and this book asks what it is really like to be old at the beginning of the
21st century in the United Kingdom, analysing leisure in older people in the
context of the subtle politics of the day to day.
Throughout the chapters, the author highlights the often missing depictions of
older people who enjoy and enact bold, informed agency as part of their everyday
lives. Drawing upon secondary data from the Mass Observation Archive, a social
thesis of leisure and ageing emerges that challenges the individualism inherent in
‘active ageing.’ It is proposed that the idea of ‘active ageing’ creates complex
constraints to leisure as people strive to measure up to cultural expectations. The stories in this book advocate for an appreciation and re-evaluation of passive
leisure in later life, and the enjoyment and freedom it can bring.
The project is therefore useful to students and researchers of leisure studies,
gerontology and sociology of ageing.