Continental Drifter: Taking the Low Road with the First Grand Tourist Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

Continental Drifter: Taking the Low Road with the First Grand Tourist Book

Tim Moore's first book, Frost on My Moustache had one reviewer setting him up as a "contender for Bill Bryson's crown as king of comic travels". That successful debut is now followed with this offering--a journey in the style of Byronesque "grand tours" of Europe. Travelling in a clapped-out Rolls Royce, Moore follows the trail of the first recognised British tourist of Europe, a 17th-century pastor's son called Thomas Coryate.There is certainly something of Bill Bryson in Moore's style, and this book is reminiscent of Neither Here Nor There. He cracks similar slapstick quips and travels with a liberal dose of self-irony. Frequently, his jokes are brilliantly judged and have you laughing out loud. But unlike Bryson, Moore can make gaffes of taste, and some readers may find the gags about car crash victims and murdered Kosovan families beyond the pale.This is a very funny book in places, and Moore writes moving passages about Coryate and his ultimately tragic story. Yet, in spite of its undoubted merits, Continental Drifter turns into something of a disappointment. By the end--perhaps because the first 100 pages are so good--it feels as though Moore could have done with a more severe editor. The book is a good 60 pages too long and begins to drag in the second half, when Moore's comic timing diminishes along with his enthusiasm for the journey--and I'm not just saying that because he coins "toby" as a new word for sewage. --Toby GreenRead More

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  • Amazon

    Most people associate the Grand Tour with the baggy-shirted Byrons of its 19th-century heyday, but someone did it first and Thomas Coryate, author of arguably the first piece of pure travel writing, 'Crudities', was that man. Tim Moore retraces the Jacobean hero's footsteps - in a Rolls Royce.

  • Foyles

    They stuck their coaches on ride-on, ride off ferries, whisked through France and Italy moaning about garlic and rudeness, then bored the neighbours to death by having them all round to look at their holiday watercolours'Many people associate the Grand Tour with the baggy shirted Byrons of its 19th century heyday, but someone had to do it first and Thomas Coryate, author of arguably the first piece of pure travel writing, CRUDITIES, was that man. Tim Moore travels through 45 cities in the steps of a larger-than-life Jacobean hero incidentally responsible for introducing forks to England and thus ending forever the days of the finger-lickin'-good drumstick hurlers of courts gone by. Coryate's early 17th century bawdy anecdotes include being pelted with eggs, pursued by a knife wielding man in a turban and, finally, being vomited on copiously by a topless woman with a beer barrel on her head:- For once, Tim Moore has no trouble keeping up the modern-day side. And his authentic method of travel to replicate these adventures? A clapped-out pink Rolls Royce, of course.

  • 0349114196
  • 9780349114194
  • Tim Moore
  • 2 May 2002
  • Abacus
  • Paperback (Book)
  • 384
  • New edition
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