#Culture » The death of the bath: another casualty of the pace of modern life Comments Feed [p?c1=2&c2=6035736&cv=2.0&cj=1] Culture RSS Feed dcsimg Monday 21 January 2013 | Blog Feed | All feeds Website of the Telegraph Media Group with breaking news, sport, business, latest UK and world news. Content from the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph newspapers and video from Telegraph TV. ___________________ Submit * Home * News * World * Sport * Finance * Comment * Blogs * Culture * Travel * Life * Fashion * Tech * Dating * Offers * Jobs * Film * Music * Art * Books * TV and Radio * Theatre * Dance * Opera * Photography * Hay Festival * Video * In the Know Blogs Home » Culture » Harry Mount Harry Mount Harry Mount's latest book is How England Made the English: From Hedgerows to Heathrow. He is also the author of Amo, Amas, Amat and All That: How to Become a Latin Lover and A Lust for Windowsills - a Guide to British Buildings from Portcullis to Pebbledash. A former leader writer for the Telegraph, he writes about politics, buildings and language for lots of British and American newspapers and magazines. [harr.jpg] The death of the bath: another casualty of the pace of modern life By Harry Mount Last updated: July 12th, 2010 Comment on this Comment on this article Reports of the end of the bath mark a significant change in the way the British live. The average number of baths per person has gone down from nine a month, a decade ago, to five this year. Developers are increasingly squeezing showers into tiny spaces into new flats and houses. And people modernising their homes are ripping out baths to produce acres of new tiled flooring to pad around in. I sense an American influence here. When I lived in New York, four years ago, new apartments were being built that not only didn't have baths; they didn't even have kitchens - their young owners ate out for every meal. For a long time now, Americans have been amazed at the concept of a bath without a shower attached – why wallow around in your own dirt, they ask. Well, actually, most of the dirt ends up in the bath. And, in any case, a long contemplative bath is one of life's great pleasures. It's not just Archimedes who thought up extraordinary ideas in the bath. There's something about lying in hot water, staring into space, that somehow seems more worthwhile than hanging around doing nothing outside a bath. And it is then, with your body relaxed, and your mind free from guilt at its complete leisure, that inspiration arrives; well, sometimes it arrives. And, if it doesn't, a book or a newspaper in the bath brings a new heightened pleasure to reading. As well as being a casualty of property developers, the bath is also a casualty of the quickened pace of modern life; of people feeling the need to do something useful the whole time. Or, if they're not doing something useful, they feel they should at least be texting someone; and people are understandably nervous about dropping their mobiles in the bath. As the last bathwater dribbles down the plughole, a lot of great ideas and thoughts will disappear with it, too. 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