Search results for ""author tim moore""

Inspired by the swashbuckling travelogues of Victorian diplomat Lord Dufferin, frail surburbanite Tim Moore sets out to prove his physical and spiritual worth before his sceptical Nordic in-laws by retracing Dufferin's epic voyage to Iceland and Spitzbergen. Dufferin's battles with icebergs, polar bears and the deep potations of hospitable Norsemen is a tale of derring-do; Moore's struggle against seasickness, vertigo and over-priced groceries is all too plainly one of derring-don't. As his bid to emulate the Empire tradition of fearless pluck in the face of adversity crumbles before haughty Icelandic skippers, a convoy of Norwegian Vikings and Spitzbergen's Soviet ghost towns, he finds himself transferring his affections to Dufferin's valet Wilson, a man so profoundly gloomy that 'he was seen to smile but once, when told that his colleague, the steward, had been almost thrown overboard'. As Moore says, 'Dufferin seems the personification of Kipling's 'If'. I'm more of a 'But... ' man myself.' FROST ON MY MOUSTACHE is the wretched apologia of a big earl's blouse.

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Tim Moore - indefatigable travelling everyman – switches two wheels for four as he journeys across Trumpland in an original Model T Ford.‘Alarmingly full of incident, very funny – even mildly transformative’ Daily MailLacking even the most basic mechanical knowhow, Tim Moore sets out to cross Trumpland USA in an original Model T Ford. Armed only with a fan belt made of cotton, wooden wheels and a trunkload of ‘wise-ass Limey liberal gumption’, his route takes him exclusively through Donald-voting counties, meeting the everyday folks who voted red along the way.He meets a people defined by extraordinary generosity, willing to shift heaven and earth to keep him on the road. And yet, this is clearly a nation in conflict with itself: citizens ‘tooling up’ in reaction to ever-increasing security fears; a healthcare system creaking to support sugar-loaded soda lovers; a disintegrating rust be

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Tim Moore completes his epic (and ill-advised) trilogy of cycling's Grand Tours. Julian Berrendero's victory in the 1941 Vuelta a Espana was an extraordinary exercise in sporting redemption: the Spanish cyclist had just spent 18 months in Franco's concentration camps, punishment for expressing Republican sympathies during the civil war. Seventy nine years later, perennially over-ambitious cyclo-adventurer Tim Moore developed a fascination with Berrendero's story, and having borrowed an old road bike with the great man's name plastered all over it, set off to retrace the 4,409km route of his 1941 triumph - in the midst of a global pandemic. What follows is a tale of brutal heat and lonely roads, of glory, humiliation, and then a bit more humiliation. Along the way Tim recounts the civil war's still-vivid tragedies, and finds the gregarious but impressively responsible locals torn between welcoming their nation's only foreign visitor, and bundling him and his filthy bike into a vat of antiviral gel.

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‘Bill Bryson on two wheels’ IndependentSelf-confessed loafer Tim Moore, seduced by the speed and glamour of the biggest annual sporting event in the world, sets out to cycle the Tour de France. All 3,630km of it.A few weeks before the actual Tour de France, British writer Tim Moore sets out to cycle the course and offers a laugh-out-loud funny and highly entertaining account of how the great ride would feel when embarked on by an amateur. Racing old men on butchers' bikes and being chased by cows, Moore soon resorts to standard race tactics - cheating and drugs - in a hilarious and moving tale of true adventure.

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Tim Moore - indefatigable travelling everyman – switches two wheels for four as he journeys across Trumpland in an original Model T Ford.‘Alarmingly full of incident, very funny – even mildly transformative’ Daily MailLacking even the most basic mechanical knowhow, Tim Moore sets out to cross Trumpland USA in an original Model T Ford. Armed only with a fan belt made of cotton, wooden wheels and a trunkload of ‘wise-ass Limey liberal gumption’, his route takes him exclusively through Donald-voting counties, meeting the everyday folks who voted red along the way.He meets a people defined by extraordinary generosity, willing to shift heaven and earth to keep him on the road. And yet, this is clearly a nation in conflict with itself: citizens ‘tooling up’ in reaction to ever-increasing security fears; a healthcare system creaking to support sugar-loaded soda lovers; a disintegrating rust belt all but forgotten by the warring media and political classes.With his trademark blend of slapstick humour, affable insight and butt-clenching peril, Tim Moore invites us on an unforgettable road trip through America. Buckle up!

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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.

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A 3,162 km race. A 48-year-old man. A 100-year-old bike. Made mostly of wood. That he built himself. Tim Moore sets off to recreate the most appalling bike race of all time. The notorious 1914 Giro d'Italia was an ordeal of 400-kilometre stages, cataclysmic night storms and relentless sabotage - all on a diet of raw eggs and red wine. Of the 81 who rolled out of Milan, only eight made it back.Committed to total authenticity, Tim acquires the ruined husk of a gearless, wooden-wheeled 1914 road bike with wine corks for brakes, some maps and an alarming period outfit topped off with a pair of blue-lensed welding goggles. From the Alps to the Adriatic the pair relive the bike race in all its misery and glory, on an adventure that is by turns bold, beautiful and recklessly incompetent.

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*A FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021*Tim Moore, the author of the Sunday Times bestselling French Revolutions, completes his epic (and ill-advised) trilogy of cycling's Grand Tours. Julian Berrendero's victory in the 1941 Vuelta a Espana was an extraordinary exercise in sporting redemption: the Spanish cyclist had just spent 18 months in Franco's concentration camps, punishment for expressing Republican sympathies during the civil war. Seventy nine years later, perennially over-ambitious cyclo-adventurer Tim Moore developed a fascination with Berrendero's story, and having borrowed an old road bike with the great man's name plastered all over it, set off to retrace the 4,409km route of his 1941 triumph - in the midst of a global pandemic. What follows is a tale of brutal heat and lonely roads, of glory, humiliation, and then a bit more humiliation. Along the way Tim recounts the civil war's still-vivid tragedies, and finds the gregarious but impressively responsible locals to

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'Bill Bryson on two wheels' IndependentScaling a new peak of rash over-ambition, Tim Moore tackles the 9,000km route of the old Iron Curtain on a tiny-wheeled, two-geared East German shopping bike. Asking for trouble and getting it, he sets off at the Arctic winter's brutal height, bullying his plucky MIFA 900 through the endless and massively sub-zero desolation of snowbound Finland. Haunted throughout the journey by the border detritus of watchtowers and rusted razor wire, Moore reflects on the curdling of the Communist dream, and the memories of a Cold War generation reared on the fear of apocalypse - at a time of ratcheting East-West tension. After three months, 20 countries and a 58-degree jaunt up the centigrade scale, man and bike finally wobble up to a Black Sea beach in Bulgaria, older and wiser, but mainly older.

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Ludicrous, heart-warming and improbably inspirational, Spanish Steps is the story of what happens when a rather silly man tries to walk all the way across a very large country, with a very large animal who doesn't really want to.Being larger than a cat, the donkey is the kind of animal Tim Moore is slightly scared of. Yet intrigued by epic accounts of a pilgrimage undertaken by one in three medieval Europeans, and committed to historical authenticity, he finds himself leading a Pyrenean ass named Shinto into Spain, headed for Santiago de Compostela.Over 500 miles of extreme weather and agonising bestial sloth, it becomes memorably apparent that for the multinational band of eccentrics who keep the Santiagan flame alive, the pilgrimage has evolved from a purely devotional undertaking into a mobile therapist's couch.'Hailed as the new Bill Bryson, he is in fact a writer of considerably more substance and the jokes come thick and fast' Irish Times

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A book that tells the story of London since the thirties through the 28 streets, stations and utililties of the Monopoly board. In the wonderful world of Monopoly it still only cost -50 to buy a house in Islington, you can move around London with the shake of a dice and even park your car for free. In Do Not Pass Go Tim Moore, belying his reputation as a player who always paid that -10 fine rather than take a Chance, fearlessly tackles the real thing and along the way tells the story of a game and the city that frames it. Sampling the rags and the riches he stays in a hotel in Mayfair and one in the Old Kent Road, enjoys quality time with Dr Crippen in Pentonville Prison and even winds up at the wrong end of the Water Works pipe. And, solving all the mysteries you'll have pondered whilst languishing in jail and many other you certainly wouldn't, Tim Moore reveals how Pall Mall got its name, which three addresses you won't find in your A-Z and why the sorry cul-de-sac that is Vine Street has a special place in the heart of Britain's most successful Monopoly champion. The stirring travelogue of one man's erratic progress around those 28 streets, stations and utilities, Do Not Pass Go is also an epic and lovingly researched history of London's wayward progress in the 66 years since the launch of the world's most popular board game

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Would you cheer if they sent you to Coventry? Could you stick up for Stoke or big-up Bracknell?Can you handle the thrill of Rhyl, the heaven of Hull or the mirth of Tydfil? In You are Awful, Tim Moore drives his Austin Maestro round all the places on our beloved island that nobody wants to go to – our most miserable towns, shonkiest hotels, scariest pubs, and silliest sea zoos... But as the soggy, decrepit quest unfolds he finds himself oddly smitten, and the result is a rousing, nostalgic celebration of mad, bad But I Like You Britain.

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