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| The Grand Tour: The European Adventure of a Continental Drifter | 
 enlarge | Author: Tim Moore
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (9 reviews)
Sales Rank: 919841
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.7 x 1
ISBN: 0312300476
Dewey Decimal Number: 914
EAN: 9780312300470
ASIN: 0312300476
Publication Date: June 1, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
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.
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
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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
 I loved it! March 13, 2005
I listened to the audiobook -- Michael Wade nailed the sarcasm perfectly. As for the British references, I got many of them ("Frank Butcher glasses, Grant Mitchell coat, 'I pulled up and there was Pat Butcher at reception ...', etc. - it helps to have been an eastenders addict!), and was able to gloss over the ones I didn't as the context often came through anyway.
 Rubbish July 7, 2004
1 out of 9 found this review helpful
I was going to sell my copy until I discovered that used copies were listed for 42 cents. That tells you all you need to know about this worthless book!
 Slumming the Grand Tour June 11, 2004
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
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, Chambery, Mont Cenis, Turin, Milan, Cremona, and Padua. Homeward bound, Tim transits Garda, Bergamo, Como, Spluegen 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".
Appears unaltered from UK version.... April 30, 2004
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is my first Tim Moore book and I am enjoying his wicked style. I am a UK native and found it curious that Moore, (or the publishers) decided to leave it in its original form. Many of his humorous references are to such things as well-known 1970s BBC TV programs like the The Good Old Days or the Two Ronnies,(p.18 paperback version). These references are too obscure for the American market, and I feel it should have been edited to make the experience greater for American readers. Maybe it doesn't matter if you don't know what you're missing...
A Slow Start but a Great Tour July 7, 2003
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
Grand Tour is an unusual work for Tim Moore - in addition to his usual generous helpings of laughter, he also serves the reader a fair amount of information and some poignancy. I think the alterations in Moore's usual style arise from his subject, Thomas Coryate, whose 1608 trip through the Continent inaugurated the British tradition of the grand tour (Coryate also introduced the fork, the umbrella, and the travel narrative to his native land). Coryate was a serious and pompous traveler who couldn't resist copying down every engraving and measuring every column he encountered. Moore responds by doing some actual research and interrupting his usual hysterical rants with actual facts. Unfortunately, Moore hasn't quite mastered seamless blending of information and narrative, and as a result this book is a bit slower and denser than his other two books. And although Moore manages to evoke quite a bit of sympathy and sadness for Coryate, he never seems totally comfortable with more serious writing. The result is a somewhat uneven book that takes a while to get moving. But Moore finally hits his stride while writing about Venice, and Grand Tour takes off. The last half of the book is laugh-out-loud funny, a marvelously fun romp that makes the whole book worth reading. And Moore throws in a few unusual extras on top of the laughs; he conveys a clear picture of the Europe of 1608 as well as the Europe of today, and an even clearer picture of Thomas Coryate. Though much of the book had me rolling with laughter, I finished with a lump in my throat for the man Moore calls "poor old Tom." All in all, Grand Tour is well worth buying. However, if you haven't read any Tim Moore, this book probably isn't the best place to start - try Frost on My Moustache or French Revolutions first.
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