Tom Sutcliffe
The Independent
In Kevin McCloud’s Grand Tour, Channel 4’s resident building buff is retracing the steps of the young aristocrats who went on “history’s equivalent of the gap year” and he is in rhapsodic mood. In Genoa, McCloud interviewed an unusually bookish-looking prostitute (the Grand Tour was a sexual adventure as much as a cultural one), in Parma he called in on a cheese-maker and in Venice he guided us through the piling techniques of the palazzo builders with the help of cocktail sticks and a bowl of chocolate blancmange.
I think he’s also probably been a lot more restrained than his 17th and 18th-century predecessors, steering well clear of bordellos and opting to spend the time instead with Capuchin brothers, gasping at the purity of structural proportions. It’s a perfectly pleasant way to spend a Sunday evening, anyway, and a good deal cheaper than doing the trip yourself.
