Genius Fan

When my wife announced we were going to Berlin for a citybreak holiday recently I was very excited. Not because of Checkpoint Charlie, the fallen Berlin wall, the Brandenburg Gate, the museum of the DDR, the Stasi Museum, the brutalist architecture, the photogenic underground stations, the iconic TV tower or any of that stuff…I was excited because I knew James Boswell had visited Berlin in 1764 as part of his Grand Tour.

But showing enthusiasm for a foreign trip based on its Boswell connection is not a mistake I was about to make. So we surfed the web, read our Lonely Planet guide and chirped up with sights we could see. And without raising the alarm, I went to the bookcase and reached for my copy of Boswell on the Grand Tour: Germany and Switzerland, 1764.

I read this book back in early 2022: The 23-year-old Boswell finishes his law studies at Utrecht university in Holland in summer 1764 and with typical Boswell good fortune, he finds a lift in an aristocrat’s coach along with Frederick the Great’s close friend George Keith. It takes him, along with letters of introduction, across German territories to the heart of the Prussian kingdom, Berlin. The journal includes description for the rest of the journey beyond Berlin down through Germany into Switzerland.

Boswell spent two months in Berlin and Potsdam, passing time with British diplomats (two of whom were Scottish), with soldiers and ministers and princes and families and so on. And he wrote it all down. His journal sets down the places he went and which day, the means of transport and how he found a place to rent, and his attempts to meet the king Frederick the Great.

This would be a great opportunity to follow in the footsteps of Boswell on a section of his Grand Tour. Brilliant idea. Only, don’t make the trip sound like a Boswell trip. Make it your wife’s holiday, with some Boswell thrown in.