Continental Drifter by Tim Moore

Continental Drifter Reviews

• 
  John

  I really liked this book ... a lot. However, I could see others absolutely hating it, as Tim Moore's humor tends towards the snide side, largely self-deprecatory though he may be. The book got off to a slow start, with details of Moore's purchase of a used Rolls to re-trace Thomas Coryate's 1608 Grand Tour path. Once things got underway, the trip was a riot! Though Coryate (often referred to as "Tom" or "T. C.") wasn't the easiest person to get along with it seems, Moore takes a sympathetic tone that his achievement was eventually reduced to a blip by officials back then.
  
  Narrator used an interesting method to distinguish excerpts from Coryate's journals in reading those in a somewhat stern, priggish voice; Coryate had almost a "fetish" for describing executions (and public torture) he witnessed, although for the squeamish Moore kept that to a minimum, so that you get the idea.
  
  Highly recommended if you're desperate for a book that's a guaranteed laugh fest.
• 
  thereadytraveller

  Continental Drifter details Moore’s journey as he retraces the footsteps of Thomas Coryate, an English traveller in the early 17th century who was credited with bringing the eating fork (and the umbrella) to the English dinner table (although one assumes he left the umbrella in the coat rack).
  
  Travelling in his Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow, Moore undertake this Grand Tour of Europe popularised by British aristocrats during the 17th and 18th centuries in his usual offbeat fashion. Whilst the book does have some funny moments, unfortunately I found myself midway through tiring of the journey and drifting off myself.
• 
  Becky

  Not quite as funny as I was hoping, and the author and I will forever disagree about Venice; however this was a very intetesting and entertaining read and one that introduced me to a truly fascinating and pqthetic character from history.
• 
  Nathan Albright

  Once you become familiar with this author and his approach, as this is the fourth book of his I have read, you have a great deal of insight into what to expect.  This book delivers what one would expect on the surface level--the author engages in some sort of ridiculous but historically significant travel stunt and shows himself as an English lout abroad.  He attempts to live both the high life and the low life and tries to avoid making his behavior heroic--mock heroism is a guise he adopts often--in order to correspond to our contemporary tastes for irony and in order to avoid being the subject of envy.  If you have read humorous travel writing before [1], you know what to expect with a great deal of the material here, where the author seeks to follow the itinerary of the first known English grand tourist, a tragic figure by the name of Thomas Coryate, whose attempts at gaining respect backfired and led him to increasingly desperate attempts at travel that ultimately ended with his death in India.  Like some of his other books, then, this is a book that offers a great deal of humor but also has a lot of melancholy undergirding it.
  
  In terms of its contents, this book is written with a few mostly long chapters that take up over 350 pages of written material.  This book is truly a grand one in its scope, showing the author in a used Rolls Royce attempting to live on the cheap while following the itinerary of Coryate's Grand Tour in the early 1600's.  Naturally, being almost monolingual, the author finds himself having trouble with people in other places, finds frightening places to sleep, and even manages to illegally park in front of a police station at one point.  His itinerary takes him through some fairly familiar cities in France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands, and his observations are not necessarily cruel.  For example, he finds Padua an amazing city once its circular geography is understood but finds himself with a great aversion to Venice, a city which in his estimation is doomed to demographic failure because of the shortage of children.  The author also demonstrates a wide degree of knowledge for the follies of English travelers abroad and apparently has to deal with a lot of Gary Glitter jokes because apparently joking about pedophilia is funny to some people, I guess.
  
  What I found most worthwhile about this book, though, was those sadder and more melancholy moments that the author demonstrates here beneath the veneer of surface comedy.  Ultimately, it is the book's genuinely more touching moments that earned my respect the most.  There is, of course, the tragedy of the poor but earnest Thomas Coryate seeking respect that he will never find and eventually despairing of life while abroad in India, who never received the respect he deserved despite introducing the English to the habit of a grand tour and also introducing the fork and the umbrella to England as a result of his European travels.  There is the tragedy of Tom Moore's continual heroic journeys that he feels necessary to disguise as campy and mock-heroic travels because he feels that an earnest and sincere effort will not be appreciated.  The author even expresses a feeling of sadness for the loss of national identity in the face of growing European unity, the feeling that it will be unnecessary in the future for English to travel to other places because European unity will lead to a depressing sameness between countries, a worry I think that the author overstates, thankfully, even if the thought appears to oppress him somewhat.
  
  [1] See, for example:
  
  
  https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...
  
  
  https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
  
  
  https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
  
  
  https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
  
  
  https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2011...
• 
  Sho

  So in this one Tim Moore follows the journey of Thomay Coryate, who is credited with 3 things:
  a) bringing the fork to the United Kingdom
  2) inventing the word umbrella
  iii) inventing the Grand Tour of Europe so beloved of fops in the 18th century.
  
  Coryate wrote an account of his journey, mostly on foot, in his book Coryat's Crudities hastily gobbled up in Five Months Travels in France, Italy, &c, which is how Moore knew where to go. As well as (mostly) following Coryate's route, Moore decided to do it in a foppish purple velvet suit (I'm not sure I entirely understood his reason for doing so) and using a clapped out Rolls Royce as his mode of transport.
  
  There was a little description of the adventure of purchasing said automobile at the beginning of the book, which reminded me a little of Charlie Connelley's description of buying his car for You Are Awful (see my review) and then off he drove.
  
  Some of the buildings that Coryate had seen, of course, are still there and where possible Moore gives an account of them. He also had a go at measuring them in the style of Coryate (mostly pacing along walls and hugging pillars).
  
  All in all it's an interesting read, especially if you like travel books as I do, and it is (for me) particularly interesting to read Moore's impressions of Germany (which are coloured by the blue funk that seems to have descended upon him as he left Switzerland).
  
  It's encouraged me to look for the original work (and I'm hoping that I can find it free for my Kindle)
  
  As a sort of aside: after 'doing Europe' Coryate didn't have a happy time in England and embarked on his final journey: to India which he also described in a book. Which has been used as the inspiration for a journey (by bike) and another book for me to add to my ever growing 'to be read' pile.
• 
  Babak Fakhamzadeh

  Quotes from all sorts of newspapers litter the back flap and first page claiming all sorts of things from Tim Moore being the best thing since sliced cheese to his book being more fun than two sore feet in an all-female sauna. However, his humor, something of a mix between Monty Python and your run-of-the-mill teenage comedy is tiring after the first few chapters. Moore's opening and closing chapters are good, but that's because of their subject.
  The author decided to do the Grand Tour of Europe, something British aristocrats did during the 17th and 18th centuries which mostly involved going down to Venice and back. Moore's traveling in the footsteps of the first Grand Tourist, Thomas Coryate, who traveled in the first decade of the 17th century and ended up introducing the fork and the umbrella to the British isles. The author's opening and closing chapter are the best in the book because there he uses his wit in describing Coryate's life up to and after his tour of Europe. And since Coryate's decision to travel Europe was groundbreaking, his decision after his return to set out again which eventually had him end up in India is even more so and Moore is an engaging writer in describing these phases of Coryate's life.
  Besides those chapters, the first half of the book, roughly Moore's trip to Venice, is entertaining enough, where the second half, his trip back, is bearable, at best. It simply isn't interesting enough to read about a solitary traveler, driving around in an old Rolls Royce and wearing a purple flannel suit who mostly talks to himself and sleeps in car parks.
  One interesting find was that Moore's quotes of Coryate's book, describing the peoples of Holland, Germany or Switzerland are very different from what is today considered typically Dutch, German or Swiss.
• 
  Magdelanye

  Tim Moore is one of those people who have the ability to appreciate life as it is in all its various and often grotty aspects. If it seems at times he is rather crass and vacuous he is also often hilarious as he descibes his retracing of the recorded voyage of Thomas Coryate,400 years earlier. With an eye for synchronicities and a rather limited range of interests, he manages to deliver a good deal of history and a credible assessment of the local atmosphere as he lurches through Coryates itinary in a decrepit Rolls,going so far as to park it for an epic bit of walking some of the way on foot,as Coryate did for much of the journey.
  
  Travel stories I have read generally are inspired by either the authors own quirks and long term interests or an interest in someone elses,the solo adventurer or the one following in illustrous footsteps.TM,by contrast,seems to have picked TC rather at random,and initially he was slow to warm to the man. The trip was for me just as much about TM's shift in attitude as it was about his route. That he progesses from peevish amd verging on condescending at the begimming.to marvelling and defending the luckless hero in his mostly irony free epilogue.
  
  In the end,I agree with his philosophy,that having been placed here on ...the most varied and exciting planet in the known universe,it does seem rather foolish not to see as much of it as possile. p357
• 
  Andrew

  Meh. I was nearly a chapter in before I realized that this was not a
  Christopher Moore book, but by then too late... I would have had to get out of bed and walk all the way downstairs, turn on the light, and rummage around for a whole other book to read. So, me and Tim (and Thomas Coryate) were stuck with each other... and just like Moore (Tim) never really found himself in the shoes of Coryate (or any of the Grand Tour nobs), I never found myself in the Rolls of Moore. Yes, the continent is a strange and uncomfortable place, especially when (as far as I could tell) the writer would be much more happy slobbing around his local chip shop.
• 
  Erin

  Oh, Tim Moore. Yet another English export that I adore. I actually liked this book better than Frost on my Moustache, which I read just a bit ago. I love the idea of him tootling (Is that a word? I'm not sure but it seems to fit) about Europe in this crazy old Rolls Royce. I enjoyed the backstory on Tom Coryate and the beginnings of the grand tour (not to mention the introduction of the fork and umbrella to England - I can't believe the Italians beat the British to the invention of the umbrella!)
  
  But oh, Tim Moore, how can you not love Venice?!?
• 
  Scarlett O.H.

  Voor de tweede keer gelezen in de Nederlandse vertaling.
  Dit was het eerste boek van Tim Moore dat ik ooit heb gelezen, inmiddels heb ik ze allemaal en lees ze nu in de volgorde dat ze geschreven zijn. Als ik klaar ben begin ik gewoon weer opnieuw.
  Ik lig constant dubbel om Tim Moore's humor, zijn boeken zijn zo ongeveer de enige boeken waar ik zo vies hardop van in de lach schiet.
  De Nederlandse vertaler van dit boek doet daar nog een schepje boven op en en gebruikt heerlijk overtrokken woorden en zegswijzen die dit boek nog een extra dimensie geven, heerlijk!
• 
  russell barnes

  No matter how you try and rationalise it,
  Tim Moore is a genius. Whether he's attempting to ride the Tour De France, walk the Camino with a donkey or, as in this case, follow in the footsteps of the original Grand Tourist, he does it with a tight-fisted, bumbling elan that's as addictive as a crack-laced latte, and as winsome and endearing as a little rabbit's twitchy nose.
  
  * Re-read: 18th July 2008
• 
  Hannah

  I do love a book by Tim Moore :) This time Tim follows 17th century traveller, Thomas Coryat's grand tour around Europe. He finally gives some credit to Coryat for this endeavour, something Tom's peers rarely did. Fitted around the humorous tales of Tim's travels is a interesting reflection on how Europe has changed over the last 400 years with some countries changing entire identities. A good laugh and an interesting read.
• 
  Claire O'Brien

  An enjoyable enough trip around Europe, with some interesting facts and funny stories, but if that's what you're after, read
  Bill Bryson's
  Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe.
• 
  Emily

  I read this a couple of years ago and enjoyed it, but I remember very little about it.
• 
  Kevin

  One of the most amusing travel books I've ever read. A tour of Europe by auto, it proffers a very male sense of sardonic humor that is often outrageous.
• 
  Leann

  absolutely hilarious if you like British humor
• 
  Andrew Gordon

  he is a funny guy.
  The writing is a bit flowery at times, i winder if he is trying too hard.
  
  
• 
  Michelle

  Mindless and fun to read, this book makes me want to trawl through holiday websites and daydream about traveling.
• 
  Tanis

  I didn't like Tim Moore's writing, it became boring pretty quickly and I only finished it through bloody mindedness.
• 
  Edward Warner

  The usual Tim Moore silliness, as he follows the route around Europe of the original Grand Tour, the tour later done by many of England's young elites. I get why he chose to do it in a Rolls Royce, therefore, but what an awful choice, as he clearly found; a used Jag would've been so much better on narrow Italian streets, or at least a restored MG.
  
  It's never clear why he chose a Rolls nor why he, conversely (or perversely) chose to stay in some of the Continent's rattiest accommodations, the Formula 1 chain and such, which seem to make America's Motel 6 chain seem positively elegant. He also, again inexplicably, did his Tour in November-December, and since it included Germany and Holland, he froze and found many of the resorts he visited far less than their lively summer selves.
  
  Nonetheless, for all of its odd choices, Moore's book is a delight, another win from England's version of Bill Bryson (who actually now lives in the U.K. himself).
  
• 
  Mariana

  Entertaining, especially if you know at least some of the places visited. The constant self-deprecation did get a little tiring after a while though so could have done with mixing up a bit. Overall a decent read.
• 
  Andy Davis

  A really funny comic travelogue.
• 
  Chris

  Thoroughly enjoyed this. As always, Tim Moore offers giggles and insight on each page.