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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.)
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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Coryate wasn't the first Briton to cross the Channel with a view to broadening his horizons in all senses, but never before had anyone regarded Continental travel as an end in itself, let alone set off with the intention of writing a personal account of the experience. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
silver lady, frontispiece illustration Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Grand Tourists, San Marco, Mont Cenis, Grand Canal, Thomas Coryate, Coryats Crudities, East India Company, Notre Dame, Prince Henry, Sir Henry, Third Reich, Black Forest, Doge's Palace, French Revolution, Great Tun, James Bond, Milan Cathedral, Third World, Charles James Fox, Earl of Essex, Eiffel Tower, First World War, Magic Bus, The Odcombian Banquet, Villa Rotonda New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Coryate wasn't the first Briton to cross the Channel with a view to broadening his horizons in all senses, but never before had anyone regarded Continental travel as an end in itself, let alone set off with the intention of writing a personal account of the experience. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
silver lady, frontispiece illustration Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Grand Tourists, San Marco, Mont Cenis, Grand Canal, Thomas Coryate, Coryats Crudities, East India Company, Notre Dame, Prince Henry, Sir Henry, Third Reich, Black Forest, Doge's Palace, French Revolution, Great Tun, James Bond, Milan Cathedral, Third World, Charles James Fox, Earl of Essex, Eiffel Tower, First World War, Magic Bus, The Odcombian Banquet, Villa Rotonda New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 19
books:
See all 19 books this book cites
2
books
cite this book:
- Grand Tour by Christopher Hibbert on page 283, and Back Matter
- Measure for Measure (Signet Classics) by William Shakespeare on page 360
- British History (Teach Yourself Instant Reference) by Helicon Publishing in Back Matter
- Pleasure and Guilt On the Grand Tour: Travel Writing and Imaginative Geography, 1600-1830 by Chloe Chard in Back Matter
- The Grand Tour by Patrick Delaforce in Back Matter
See all 19 books this book cites
- French Revolutions: Cycling the Tour de France by Tim Moore in Front Matter
- French Revolutions: Cycling the Tour de France by Tim Moore in Front Matter
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