Overview

The second volume of diaries from one of Britain's best-loved national treasures. After a live performance at the Hollywood Bowl, The Pythons made their last performance together in 1983 in the hugely successful MONTY PYTHON'S MEANING OF LIFE. Writing and acting in films and television then took over much of Michael Palin's life, culminating in the smash hit A FISH CALLED WANDA (for which he won a BAFTA for Best Supporting Actor), and the first of his celebrated television journeys for the BBC. He co-produced, wrote and played the lead in THE MISSIONARY opposite Maggie Smith, who also appeared with him in A PRIVATE FUNCTION, written by Alan Bennett. Such was Michael's fame in the US that he was enticed into once again hosting Saturday Night Live (with his mother making a highly successful surprise guest appearance). Over the course of these diaries he films several more journeys for television and becomes chairman of the pressure group Transport 2000. His family remains a constant as his and Helen's children enter their teens.

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9781474625852

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Reviews

Palin reminds me of Samuel Johnson: driven, intellectually formidable, and spurred on by self-reproach and the wholly irrational idea that he's not really getting on with it . . . Palin is a seriously good writer. These diaries are full of fine phrases and sharp little sketches of scenes * DAILY MAIL * This is a brisk, pithy, amusing read, teeming with the writer's inner life, crammed with high-quality observations . . . and deft ink-pen sketches of his associates * SPECTATOR * Charming and vastly entertaining * IRISH TIMES * His entries are riddled with the astute wit and generosity of spirit that characterise both his performances and his previously published writing * TIME OUT, 'Book of the Week' * It's clear why Cleese later nominated Palin as his luxury item on Desert Island Discs . . . he makes such unfailingly good company . . . this is the agreeably written story of how a former Python laid the foundation stone by which he would reinvent himself as a public institution: the People's Palin * GUARDIAN * A fascinating and wry cultural take on the 1980s . . . it's also, when added to volume one, proving to be the most beguiling and revealing of ongoing autobiographies * SUNDAY HERALD * This is the Michael Palin with whom the public has fallen in love. A man whose ordinary likeability makes us feel we know him, and that he is incapable of nastiness or an outburst of bad temper * SUNDAY TELEGRAPH * There are some fabulous and very funny snippets about Alan Bennett and Maggie Smith . . . the behind-the-scenes antics of the Pythons and their wider circle make great reading * OBSERVER *

Author Information

Michael Palin has written and starred in numerous TV programmes and films, from Monty Python and Ripping Yarns to The Missionary and The Death of Stalin. He has also made several much-acclaimed travel documentaries, his journeys taking him to the North and South Poles, the Sahara Desert, the Himalayas, Eastern Europe and Brazil. His books include accounts of his journeys, two novels (Hemingway's Chair and The Truth), three volumes of diaries, Erebus, the Story of a Ship and Great Uncle Harry. From 2009 to 2012 he was president of the Royal Geographical Society. He received a BAFTA fellowship in 2013, and a knighthood in the 2019 New Year Honours list. He lives in London.

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