Frost on my Moustache: The Arctic Exploits of a Lord and a Loafer

Tim Moore is always good for a laugh and "Frost on my moustache", his first book, is amongst his best. Moore heads off to points north, following in the footsteps of Lord Dufferin, who wrote a travel book about his adventures in and near the Arctic Circle.

Moore spends much of the book comparing himself with Dufferin with Moore coming up the worse. He recounts his trip on an England-Iceland ferry, which seemed to consist of him being violently ill the entire way, his journey around Iceland, complete with its hordes of miserly German cyclists, his close encounter with Jan Mayen and his visit to the wonderful Svalbard.

I re-read this recently prior to my trip to Iceland and while the Iceland that Moore visited is less than 20 years old, show more progress means you don't recognise a lot of what he writes. But then I didn't have an encounter with a miserly German cyclist so there's an upside. show less

So here is this British guy, Tim Moore, known for his humorous essays and books--a sort of George Plimpton meets Bill Bryson kind of fellow. Moore's Icelandic wife Birna picked up a copy of Dufferin's Letters from High Latitudes at a used bookstore, and eventually Moore perused it. He became hooked.

Being a naturally enthusiastic type, Moore immediately decided to replicate the Dufferin saga, following in the Lord’s (boat) wake, so to speak. I started counting how many times Moore came to regret that decision, but lost track.

Moore begins his epic journey by traveling to Clandeboye, the Irish ancestral home of Lord Dufferin, to meet the current Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava. In the process of making a spectacle of himself Moore show more discovers that he is not of their ilk and betakes himself off to and other, more remote, places.

Not in a position to travel in the luxurious footsteps of Lord Dufferin "... and other first-generation eco-tourists" (Evelyn Waugh, William Morris, W.H. Auden…), Moore starts his journey on a container ship, rather than a schooner. Misadventures await. As he relates each stage of his journey he inserts Dufferin quotes and related anecdotes. "I'd come to accept that all along I’d been pitting myself against Dufferin." On reaching Iceland, Moore finds his opportunity to escape from his vast inferiority complex, and gets on his bicycle in order to "out-Dufferin Dufferin."

Dufferin had highly anticipated the journey through the forbidding interior lava highlands of Iceland on horseback. But he lavished a quantity of days camping in high style and playing chess. Dufferin spent too much camping, waiting for geysers to erupt, and partying with Prince Napoleon and his entourage, and ran out of time. After completing the modern-day, Dufferin left Iceland to continue his journey before the fall set in. Moore recreates the part of the journey that Dufferin planned but didn’t take. Instead of traveling with guides and servants on Icelandic horses, Moore journeys through the desolate highland on his bicycle, accompanied by his brother-in-law. These misadventures are related with memorable catchphrases that you can memorize and adapt for your own personal adventures: "I have done that—it is only a little stream" (when faced with a raging torrent); "Why did you not make such a study?" (i.e., why the h*** didn’t you research this first?).

Crippled but still standing, albeit bent, Moore makes it across Iceland, then travels back to Reykjavik and on to Hofn by means of standard contemporary transportation. In Hofn he meets up with a convoy of "Viking ships" and sails on to Norway, ultimately attempting Jan Mayen by Norweigan transport plane, and gaining Spitzbergen by ship. Moore's adventures on the remote island of Spitzbergen are truly epic, and include his exceptional interview with "The Syssel 'mann'."

In the course of his Grand Adventure/Misadventure, Tim Moore comes to identify himself more closely with Dufferin’s manservant Wilson than with Dufferin himself. And if he never truly understands Dufferin, he does feel a close empathy with him by the end of his travails. An additional treat to this highly entertaining jaunt is the epilogue, which features some surprise information about the dour Wilson. show less

Back in the day being a travel writer must have been a breeze. Stick a pin in a map, pack yourself off to some foreign shore then write something exotic enough to keep your stay-at-home readers entertained and feeling as if they've learned something valuable about a place they're almost certainly never going to have the opportunity to visit.
Nowadays of course thing are somewhat different.
TV, the internet and cheap air fares mean that potential readers are more worldly-wise and well-travelled than ever before and today's generation of writers have to find something a touch more distinctive if they want to sell books.
More often than not the hook travel writers now hang their hats on is humour. In fact many books are more comic adventure show more than they are travel writing. Hence we have Tony Hawks taking a kitchen appliance on a trip to Ireland (Around Ireland with a Fridge) and Danny Wallace embarking on an adventure which would take him around the world simply by deciding to say yes to any question he is asked (Yes Man). Tim Moore falls into the same tradition. This is, after all, a man who set off on a 500-mile pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela for his book Spanish Steps, then decided to make it more medievally authentic by bringing along a donkey.
Frost on my Moustache sees the author following in the footsteps of one of the first true travel writers - 19th century English aristocrat Lord Dufferin. Dufferin though, it turns out, hadn't taken the easy option when deciding where to head for. His travels had taken him on a series of adventures inside the Arctic Circle - adventures which Moore is woefully unprepared to recreate.
Generally speaking I am a fan of this genre of comic/travel writing and Moore in particular, but while there were moments that made me laugh here it simply didn't engage me as much as some of his other books. Amusing, but ultimately forgettable. show less

Great read was surprised to learn something that I knew absolutely nothing about. Great characters so 19th Century.

Love this book. Self-depreciating humor at it's best.

If you get to pp. 159-60, you discover that the title is the punch line of a dirty joke. A pretty good one, actually.

I started to read this but did not get far. Badly written, & never getting to the point, it did not seem worth putting a lot of time into reading.