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Conventional understanding of the Grand Tour of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is personified by the figure of a languid young British aristocrat sent to Italy to see the classical ruins, acquire some social polish, and return home with a crate of Roman busts and a copy of Piranesi’s Views. But Celina Fox’s groundbreaking book reveals an entirely different Grand Tour—one focused not on the ancient past but on the modern world of contemporary Northern Europe. The young men whom we meet were travelling to study in the great European universities, learn international law and languages, find innovative science and medicine, cut their diplomatic teeth at foreign courts, make commercial contacts in powerful trade centres, and understand new technologies.

Through their journals and letters, we share the excitement and indignities of travel for young men often at liberty for the first time in their lives and encountering new customs and societies. Letters from their parents—sometimes cajoling, sometimes coercive—attest to frustrated efforts to retain control, mediated by mentors who assisted them along the way. The travellers’ vivid accounts of what they saw and learned are skilfully woven into the complex historical narrative of their times.

Fox shows that the Northern Grand Tour arose out of the inability of the English education system, centred on the classics, to equip young men with the modern practical knowledge needed for their future careers. It was formative for many who later became influential in British society—and the benefits they derived from their travels were recognised and adopted on a wider scale back in Britain.