Do Not Pass Go: From the Old Kent Road to Mayfair Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

Do Not Pass Go: From the Old Kent Road to Mayfair Book

Do Not Pass Go is the fourth comedy travelogue from Tim Moore--previous books have, respectively, chronicled his experiences trekking across Iceland in the footsteps of the Victorian Lord Dufferin (Frost on My Moustache), recreating Coryate's Grand Tour in a Rolls Royce (Continental Drifter) and cycling the route of the Tour de France (French Revolutions). Here, Moore, abandoning his customary modus operandi of inept Englishman abroad, opts to explore his native city by, as his children put it, "going round the Monopoly board but, like, in real life." Monopoly was, at least officially, invented during the 1930s by Charles Darrow, an unemployed boiler salesman from Germantown, Pennsylvania. (Darrow went to his grave, Moore notes, "stubbornly refusing to recall any contact with The Landlord Game, patented in 1904."). The original, and subsequent American versions, featured the streets of Atlantic City. The English, London edition first appeared in 1936, the same year as television and, apparently, the phrase "body odour". Produced by Waddingtons, a firm of Leeds printers, the actual streets and stations were haphazardly chosen by Victor Watson, the managing director, and his secretary, Marjorie Phillips, after a weekend jolly in the capital. Armed with board, dice and a 1933 London directory, Moore soon finds himself beaten by a Brazilian transsexual at Kings Cross (where else?); searching for the "Ampersand of Death" on Oxford Street; discovering how Coventry Street made the grade; tracing the decline of proto-Starbucks Lyons in Piccadilly and, of course, eating jellied eels in the "poo brown" east end of Whitechapel. Moore places himself firmly in the centre of his yarn and, like Bill Bryson, displays a remarkable eye for the incongruous comic detail. Sometimes the quips and jokes come at expense of real interaction with those he meets, but the result is a hilarious paean to game and city, that will have you ferreting about in a cupboard to retrieve a long neglected set. (I know I did.) --Travis ElboroughRead More

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  • Amazon

    Tells the story of a game and the city that frames it. Sampling the rags and the riches, the author 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.

  • Play

    A book that tells the story of London since the thirties through the 28 streets stations and utilities of the Monopoly board. In the wonderful world of Monopoly it still only cost [pound]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 [pound]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 stations utilities and street 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

  • 0099433869
  • 9780099433866
  • Tim Moore
  • 2 October 2003
  • Vintage
  • Paperback (Book)
  • 352
  • New edition
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