Drawing on travel books and diaries spanning four hundred years, Geoffrey Trease illustrates the fascinating journey of the European Grand Tour. This was a tradition rich with history from Elizabethan times down to the middle of the nineteenth century and the later introduction of railroads and tourism.With tours often lasting as long as three or four years, they were sine qua non for the scions of the richest and most powerful British families. Originally intended to supply young aristocrats with a proper background for statecraft and diplomacy — occasionally for espionage — the Grand Tour developed into an event of considerable cultural and educational significance.Finally, by the middle of the eighteenth century, it had transformed into a social convention.Wherever grand tourists went, by boat, barge, coach, horseback, sedan chair, and even by foot, they never forgot they were Englishmen. Another eighteenth-century traveller even suggested that in order to enjoy the comforts of home, a touring Englishman must take with him “sheets, pillows, blankets, towels, pistols, a pocket-knife to eat with, soup, tea, salt, spoons, loaf sugar, tea-and-sugar chest, mustard, cayenne, pepper, ginger, nutmeg, oatmeal, sago, plenty of medicine …”Featuring famous grand tourists such as the trailblazing Sir Philip Sidney and Henry Wotten, John Milton, the diaryist John Evelyn, Joseph Addison, Thomas Coke, Horace Walpole, James Boswell, and the historian Edward Gibbon, The Grand Tour is a delightful and detailed study. Praise for Geoffrey Trease“Geoffrey Trease has certainly got the knack. He can write for young people, in this case mainly for teenagers, without being obvious. The excitement is there where fact permits. So is the lucidity, with events all round the world fitting smoothly into their proper place and time” -The Daily Telegraph“I found it a fascinating book. I wish that all history books were so inviting and intelligent.” - Naomi Lewes, BBC “History at its most agreeable and readable.” - Time and Tide Geoffrey Trease (1909-1998) was the author of more than one hundred books, including children’s books. He revolutionised children’s literature and was one of the first authors to deliberately appeal to both boys and girls through strong leading characters of both genders. In 1966 Trease won the New York Herald Tribune Book Award for This is Your Century. Geoffrey Trease was educated at Oxford University and travelled widely in Europe and beyond. He lived in Herefordshire on the slopes of the Malvern Hills.