The Grand Tour

In Hibbert's vivid and entertaining account we follow the tourists on their journey and using the letters and diaries of such celebrated figures as Boswell and Walpole, Gibbon and Beckford - we see eighteenth-century Europe through their eyes, as they describe the cities they visited, the buildings and art treasures they were expected to see, the inns at which they stayed, the food they ate, the people they met, the amours they enjoyed, the splendour and squalor they encountered. We learn their opinions of foreign manners, customs and architecture, and the consequent effects of the Grand Tour upon artistic taste and habits of life in England, the growth of its collections of art and the development of its architecture and gardens. The Grand Tour is extensively illustrated with pictures researched from museums and collections throughout the world...