Customer Reviews

The Sinner's Grand Tour: A Journey Through the Historical Underbelly of Europe

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

He's done it again, folks. Tony Perrottet's new book is chock full of history, humor and one-of-a-kind detail you will NOT find anywhere else. Whether you're planning a European adventure or you're looking to spice up your dinner party banter, Perrottet has got you covered. How could anyone resist titles like "Love In the Time of Body Lice" and "The Attic of Royal Sex"? I couldn't. And I consider myself the better for it. Seriously. Invite me to your next dinner and you'll see: thanks to Perrottet I'll be the life of the party. I loved his book "Napoleon's Privates"...and I love "The Sinner's Grand Tour." Maybe even a smidge more. Buy this book immediately. You won't be disappointed.

I never thought learning about the more raunchy side of history could be so entertaining until I picked up this book. I highly recommend you read this naughty travelogue so you can impress and shock your friends with stories about Casanova's escape from prison and King Edward VII's sex chair. I admit this book made me blush, but it also made me laugh at how there never seems to be a lack of erotic escapades throughout history. A great read

Tony Perrottet has done it again and knocked the ball out of the ballpark. This is a hilariously funny, richly detailed and impeccably researched work of scholarship that is simultaneously entertaining in the extreme. Highly recommended, great fun and very naughty.

I'm not sure who you can compare Tony Perrottet to as a writer and historian. He's as funny as Kingsley Amis when detailing his travails as a traveler and reporter (and husband and father--he tends to undertake his research jaunts with faithful wife Lesley, and exuberant small sons Henry and Sam in tow), but he's also as meticulous and resourceful as the best historians. Evidently determined to wreak vengeance on every grade school history teacher who managed to make the past seem deadly dull, Perrottet has a special talent for bringing the past vividly alive, often through illuminating corners of history that fustier heads overlook. In this instance, the sex chair. And (oh God) the "test platter." (You'll have to read the book). And then there is the chapter on Pierre Cardin and the Marquis de Sade. If there is a funnier, more harrowing, more interesting chapter in a nonfiction book this season, I'd like to know what it is. Highly recommended.

This is the perfect book book for anyone considering coming to Europe this year (or even for an armchair traveler). The author visits all the classic destinations -- London, Provence, Venice, Rome, Capri -- and comes up with something totally unexpected and original in each place. It's very entertaining and witty, but also erudite and clearly involved a huge amount of research (Perottet writes for the Smithsonian Magazine and New York Times and other heavy hitters). I found the book after I read one of the author's stories on Slate.com about licentious travel in Paris (he goes searching for brothels of the belle epoque, which were all closed down after WW2) and was definitely intrigued -- I live in Paris and it was a real eye-opener, he found corners of the city I never knew existed! You might want to check out the book's website, which has a very cool map of Europe with "click here" buttons on each of the places. (...) . It's definitely inspiring! My favorite chapter is probably the one where he goes to a little village in the south of France where the Marquis de Sade lived and hangs around trying to meet Pierre Cardin, the fashion idol, who now owns the castle... He finally makes it into the 'dungeon'! A close second may be the chapter on the Vatican, where he tracks down a legendary bathroom painted with erotic art in the Renaissance, hidden away near the Pope's bedroom...
It's all a lot of fun, and you learn all sorts of weird history, like the truth about medieval chastity belts or the Hellfire Clubs of England...

Most of my reading is done on the subway these days and I have to admit that I attracted a bit of attention with my irrepressible laughter and gasps at this brilliantly researched and written book. Even more so when they snatched a glance at what I was reading. My subway cred is way up. Not only that, I am sure to become the most popular dinner guest once I regale other guests with some of the fascinating tales and facts that are uncovered. This is truly an original. Highly recommend.

Personalized tours of Europe and elsewhere provide travelers with experiences that are tailored perfectly to one's interests. Tony Perrottet designed such a tour, and used a family vacation for him to present his wife and young children with the experience of a lifetime: a romp through Europe's best sites with sexual themes. His account of their trip is titled, The Sinner's Grand Tour: A Journey Through the Historical Underbelly of Europe. Perrottet's narrative is engaging and entertaining, and the places he describes are peculiar and most of them have been omitted from the history texts most of us have read. Among my favorite chapters: visiting the bathroom that Raphael painted in the Pope's apartment at the Vatican, and being invited by Pierre Cardin to see the bowels of the house in southern France that had been owned by the Marquis de Sade. Armchair travelers will revel in Perrottet's crisp writing, but trip planners may want to stick to Baedeker or an equivalent.

Rating: Three-star (Recommended)

Tony Perrottet, author of several books that explore the fascinating and buried tales of historic debauchery and vice, has written a book that's hard to put down. This may very well be Perrottet's best book. He describes in very readable detail his jaunt across western Europe, wife and two kids in tow, as he visits the some of the most salacious and off-the-radar sites on the continent. From the royal sex chair in Paris to the pope's secret bathroom in the Vatican, Perrottet's laugh-out-loud journey is as educational as it is entertaining.

"(My wife) Les was very understanding when I'd first broached the idea of this trip back home in Manhattan ... 'It sounds great. But I'm coming too. And so are the kids.'" - Author Tony Perrottet on the Sinners's Grand Tour concept

According to the author of THE SINNER'S GRAND TOUR, his feverish visions of an odyssey of discovery through Western Europe to validate personal suspicions regarding the existence of salacious and historically suppressed sexual practices began when he was an Australian teenager attending a strict Irish Catholic high school. Yes, well, raging hormones will do that. But in this case, it also resulted in a fun read, though perhaps one of no enduring literary significance.

In eight chapters, Perrottet's travel essay focuses on Scottish male masturbation clubs, Parisien prostitution during the Belle Époque, the Marquis de Sade and his château at Lacoste in Provence, the sex lives of French medieval peasants as recorded by the Inquisition, the free-love lifestyle of British expats Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley in Switzerland, the amorous career of Casanova in Venice, the legendary existence of a bathroom in the Vatican decorated with pornographic tiles, and the island of Capri's traditional reputation for sexual hedonism.

THE SINNER'S GRAND TOUR isn't consistently salacious, though it does have its prurient moments. How can it be when the author's research is a (large) part of his family summer vacation? I mean, a narrative of the Amsterdam red light district based on personal experience this isn't.

To a large degree, what is best about Tony's book is his easy-going, dry, and sometimes self-deprecating sense of humor of which this recollection from a Scottish pub is typical:

"The bar maid leaned forward to pour another round of beer, revealing her majestic décolletage. Conversation froze as everyone admired the Secrets of Nature. Talk picked up again when she turned away. This happened over and again, like clockwork. It seemed to encourage the pace of drinking."

THE SINNER'S GRAND TOUR even contains a couple dozen or so black and white travel snaps taken by the author himself.

Perhaps the best chapter is that describing Perrottet's persistent effort to defeat the Vatican bureaucracy and gain entrance into the erotic Stufetta del Bibbiena. Honor and a medal are due.

This is a very funny account of the author's visit (with wife and two young boys) to famous "louche" places in Europe. The narrative voice is often like that from a Patrick Dennis novel: the smug sarcasm mixed with self-deprecating humor. I loved the Venice section. The visit to the Vatican bathroom with the naughty paintings by Raphael is much more interesting than The Da Vinci Code. The descriptions of the Parisian bordellos almost make one want to go back in time for a visit. (There are even pictures of The Prince of Wales' sex chair, the one he had to use because he was too fat for the missionary position.) I will probably never recover from the thought of a wig made out of the public hair of King George IV's many mistresses! The visit to the Marquis de Sade's castle (now the domain of Pierre Cardin) should make you want to book passage immediately. If you dream about food in glamorous places, the book will prove a treat.

The author is well-versed on the arts and passes along many an interesting anecdote. (One small mistake: Toscanini was a famous Italian conductor, not a famous Italian tenor.) If you want lots of juicy inside info on writers, painters, and musicians who set the standards for European fame and infamy, give this book a read to learn about the naughty, wicked places they haunted.