I Believe In Yesterday: A 2000 year Tour through the Filth and Fury of Living History

Description

'Hailed as the new Bill Bryson, he in fact a writer of considerably more substance' - Irish Times In 1989, Tim Moore moved into the last house in Chiswick with an outside toilet. Intrigued by a subsequent encounter with an elderly former resident, he finds himself inspired to travel back to the land before now, experiencing the hardships and pleasures enjoyed and endured by Moores gone by. The journey that follows takes him through the world of historical re-enactment- living on bramble leaves, Johnny cake and porridge, Moore travels from the Iron Age to the Steam Age, from Roman legionary to Tudor master to Yankee spy, sharing straw beds and daft hats with period obsessives driven by socio-historical curiosity, disillusionment with the modern world, or a simple nostalgia for campfires, flatulence and brutality. I Believe in Yesterday is an odyssey through 2,000 years of filth and fury, to a time where men were men, the nights were black, the world was your outside toilet and everything tasted faintly of leeks.

Tim Moore's books include French Revolutions, Do Not Pass Go, Spanish Steps and Nul Points and You Are Awful. He lives in London.

The world's funniest travel writer * Observer * Moore has never been afraid to suffer for his art. In pursuit of comic travelogue gold, he's followed in the footsteps of a nineteenth-century explorer; driven, silver-suited, across Europe in a temperamental Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow; cycled the 3,500km-plus route of the Tour de France; and made a pilgrimage to Santiago accompanied only by a donkey. But none of this compares to what he endured for this superbly funny new book * Time Out * One of our most amiable writers * The Times * His funniest book... Possibly the best book ever completed by a man covered in congealed animal fat, sweat and canon smoke * Independent * Moore is a talented and very funny writer * Daily Telegraph *