The Grand Tour: The European Adventure of a Continental Drifter [Paperback]

Tim Moore (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2002

The tradition of the Grand Tour was started in 1608 by an intrepid but down-at-the-heels English courtier named Thomas Coryate, who walked across Europe, miraculously managed to return home in one piece, and wrote a book about his bawdy misadventures. With The Grand Tour, Tim Moore proves not only that he is Coryate's worthy successor but one of the finest and funniest travel writers working today. Armed with a well-thumbed reprint of Coryate's book, Moore donned a purple plush suit and set off in a second-hand and highly temperamental Rolls-Royce through France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, and Holland. Like Coryate, Moore possesses an astonishing ability to land himself in humiliating predicaments. His account of his hilariously memorable misadventures on Venice's canals on one fateful afternoon is by itself worth the price of admission. Moore brings new life to the Old World and in the process sends readers into paroxysms of laugher and delight.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Has there ever been a funnier man to travel Europe, and return to tell about it, than Tim Moore? Doubtful. Certainly not the man who spawned the concept of the Grand Tour, that mainstay of young 17th- and 18th-century English aristocrats sent around Europe to be cultured but who usually spent more time in bawdy depravity than in cathedrals. That is Thomas Coryate, who walked to Venice and back in 1608. Coryate was the first man to take the trip for pleasure rather than commerce and with the specific intention of boasting on his return (in fact, he penned the first travelogue). Moore follows Coryate's footsteps from France to Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Holland, and home again, but with a few unusual props of his own--an absurd billowing purple velvet suit and a clapped-out 1980 Rolls Royce that proved impossible to park on medieval streets. (After the pompous car offends a French peasant, Moore cooks up endless versions of "This is not my car..." fibs.)

Remarkably, Moore finds that not much has changed since the slightly short man in tights wandered the continent. The city walls and medieval alleys look as if knaves could be lurking close by, while the single-track stone bridges, grand chateaux, and humble villages he sees were ancient even in Coryate's day. Moore is even able to find the places of torture Coryate describes so gleefully, including the unmarked round stone "on which if any banckerupt do sit with his naked buttocks three times in some public assembly, all his debts are ipso-facto remited." Of course, not everything is the same--while there are still picnickers on the roof of Milan's cathedral, there are also mobile phones, and bowling is now considered an art in Italy. Coryate got himself into all sorts of scrapes with his pretentiousness, belligerent arrogance, and eye for the ladies. Moore is equally adept at slapstick, which he tells with self-deprecating humor--playing James Bond at a casino in Baden-Baden, pilfering grapes in homage to Coryate--and he's just as much a cheapskate with his pan-European survey of pizza parlors and MacDonald's bathrooms. In some fantastic fluke of time, Coryate finally found his perfect travel partner in Moore, and the result is a hilarious jaunt through Europe, past and present, that's not to be forgotten or, for that matter, repeated. --Lesley Reed --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

In The Grand Tour: The European Adventure of a Continental Drifter, British travel writer Tim Moore (Frost on My Moustache) entertainingly recounts the history of a civilizing ritual for the backward Brits. Moore dates this privileged and often quite dissolute practice to Thomas Coryate, a 17th-century courtier whose travel memoir, Coryate's Crudities, recounts disastrous and ribald adventures. Ensconced in a used Rolls Royce and a red velvet suit, Moore sets out to retrace Coryate's journey. Coryate was no gentleman Moore says that his book, "[a]s well as sounding really very mad... was clearly an extended fart anthology" yet as Moore points out, he's an appropriate forefather for the many infamously vulgar English travelers. Moore's own raucous journey will delight American audiences.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin (June 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312300476
• ISBN-13: 978-0312300470
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #938,839 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This is not my car...., July 29, 2001

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A Customer - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Grand Tour: The European Adventure of a Continental Drifter (Hardcover)

If you're expecting a book detailing the re-visitation of the places Thomas Coryate, an English courtier who in 1608 made a leisure walking tour across Europe, visited some 400 years ago, told in a neat documentary form that could easily be transferred to a script for a PBS documentary.... Step away from The Grand Tour. If you're expecting the good, the bad, and the just plain odd, then the sixteen bucks you'll pay for this book may just be the best investment you could make. Tim Moore retraces Coryate's steps in a garish, tempermental 1980 Rolls Royce that is impossible to park on medival streets and spawned numerous 'this is not my car' jokes, and an even more loud, unprotective purple suit. Living on a shoestring budget, Moore manages to get himself into situations that you thought only existed in Grandpa's elaborate, embellished stories of when he was your age. My particular favorite was his escapades in Venice. Yet in the midst of the slapstick humor, Moore manages to take the Old World Europe, which proved to be dry and stale for many, and bring life and vibrancy back to them. Maybe it was just the purple suit, but Moore proves his passion for life that many travelers lack, and ought to have-especially if you're in Europe. Dave Barry for the more refined tastes, if you thrive on intellectual humor then this may just be your next favorite book.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Slumming the Grand Tour, June 10, 2004

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Joseph Haschka (Glendale, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Grand Tour: The European Adventure of a Continental Drifter (Paperback)

During the 17th century, and up to the time of the French Revolution, it was fashionable among young Englishmen of means to embark on a Grand Tour of the continent for the purpose of intellectual enlightenment or, more likely, just to wallow in the fleshpots and taverns. One of the first to record his experiences was Thomas Coryate, who made the 5-month roundtrip from his Somerset home to Venice in 1608. His travelogue was subsequently published as "Coryats Crudities" in 1611. In the autumn and early winter of 2000, author Tim Moore retraced Coryate's route, and tells us all about it in THE GRAND TOUR.

Moore's outbound route takes him to Venice via Montreuil, Amiens, Paris, Fontainebleau, Nevers, Lyon, Chambéry, Mont Cenis, Turin, Milan, Cremona, and Padua. Homeward bound, Tim transits Garda, Bergamo, Como, Splügen Pass, Chur, Zurich, Basel, Strasbourg, Durlach, Heidelberg, Worms, Mainz, Frankfurt, Coblenz, Bonn, Cologne, Emmerich, Nijmegen, Dordrecht, and Zierikzee.

Any travel narrative is made invariably more entertaining if spiced with tales of hardship. Moore's is no exception, though his travails were largely self-imposed. Choosing to journey in shabby style, he purchased a clapped-out, 1980 Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow for 4,750 pounds sterling, with a subsequent 2,186 in necessary repairs to make it roadworthy and presentable. By the end of his Grand Tour, after 3,142 miles, the Roller had reduced the author to pitiful whimpering. Frugal by nature, or the acquisition of wheels having reduced him to penury, or both, Moore spends most nights either sleeping in his car or in fleabag hotels that barely reach the level of "budget accommodations". Personal hygiene was often maintained by a dip in the local, public swimming pool. The tone of much of his adventure is well represented by his decision to emulate Coryate and walk the 50 kilometer Mainz-Frankfurt leg. Thus:

"The shoes were becoming an issue. I thought the idea was that they would mould themselves to the shape of my foot, but their plastic rigidity meant the process was being reversed. I'm not sure if it is possible to limp on both legs, but as it started to get dark ... I gave it my best shot." Later, in his hotel room:

"Peeling away my socks was more like removing a dressing ..."

Despite elements of Tim's adventure which perhaps make it more resemble Napoleon's retreat from Moscow or the Bataan Death March, his dryly-witty commentary makes THE GRAND TOUR eminently readable. And I'm ever delighted to encounter British slang: knackered (exhausted), bog (toilet), ponce (dandy, to strut), neck-down (drink). My chief complaint, which increasingly annoys me the more travel essays I read, is that there's no photo section. Perhaps publishers think the inclusion of such would render a book too pricey for the average reader.

A fitting conclusion is the Epilogue, which summarizes Coryate's life after his return. After struggling to get his book published in the face of ridicule from his social betters, he left England again in 1614, and became the first European since Alexander to walk the 3,300 miles from Jerusalem to India. Dying in 1617 at age forty, he's buried in an uninscribed, domed sarcophagus near Surat marked on East India Company charts, and still labeled on current maps, as "Tom Coryat's Tomb".

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Catch This Drift, August 10, 2001

By 

Natalie C. Lundsteen "nclundsteen" (Oxford) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Grand Tour: The European Adventure of a Continental Drifter (Hardcover)

I did laugh out loud while reading this amusing & sardonic traveler's tale, reminiscent of Michael Palin's books chronicling his BBC-funded world travels, David Sedaris' language lessons and of course Bill Bryson's comic travelogues. The author follows in the 400-year-old footsteps of the first European Grand Tour - a bit of a dry itinerary but still fun to read, especially if the reader has visited (or plans to visit) some of the stops on Moore's journey. Who wouldn't crack up as Moore describes tourists in Milan "wearing '13 trillion lire for a Coke - is that a lot?' faces?" Enjoyable for anyone who loves travel: the good, the bad & the ugly.