The grand tour of William Beckford

Elizabeth Mavor

Published by Penguin, softcover


Heir to the greatest sugar fortune ever made, William Beckford was to become one of
Georgian England's foremost eccentrics and Men of Taste.

As a child, Mozart reputedly taught him five-finger exercises on the piano, Alexander Cozens, self-styled bastard of Peter the Great, taught him to draw. The remainder of his education was completed under the baleful eye of a personal tutor, and in his father's well stocked library.
By the time he set out on his Grand Tour at the age of twenty, he was better equipped than most (not least because he possessed a lively sense of the ridiculous) to value the beauties and idiosyncrasies of a Europe that was shortly to vanish for ever.

As we rattle along with him towards Venice and Rome by way of Holland, Germany and the Alps, he not only evokes vividly his stops en route, but inadvertently reveals much of himself. Ardent lover, concert goer, snob, fanatical non-smoker and conservationist, given to wildly varied moods, he is charming, touchy, infuriating, but never dull.

This selection, which includes unpublished material – and a short biography – is drawn from one of the five surviving copies of Beckford's published account of his Tour. Thinking it too revealing of his inner nature, Beckford burned the rest.