Palin Diaries Books
The amazingly insightful, funny and brilliant record of Michael Palin's prime years as a member of the famed comedic group, Monty Python. Michael Palin has kept a diary since newly married in the late 1960s. This volume of his diaries reveals how Python emerged and triumphed, how he, John Cleese, Graham Chapman, the two Terrys---Jones and Gilliam---and Eric Idle came together and changed the face of British comedy. But this is but only part of Palin's story. Here is his growing family, his home in a north London Victorian terrace, which grows as he buys the house next door and then a second at the bottom of the garden; here, too, is his solo effort---as an actor, in Three Men in a Boat, his writing endeavours (often in partnership with Terry Jones) that produces Ripping Yarns and even a pantomime. Meanwhile Monty Python refuses to go away: the hugely successful movies that follow the TV (his account of the making of both The Holy Grail and the Life of Brian movies are page-turners), the at times extraordinary goings-on of the many powerful personalities who coalesced to form the Python team, the fight to prevent an American TV network from bleeping out the best jokes on U.S. transmission, and much more---all this makes for funny and riveting reading. The birth and childhood of his three children, his father's growing disability, learning to cope as a young man with celebrity, his friendship with George Harrison, and all the trials of a peripatetic life are also essential ingredients of these diaries. A perceptive and funny chronicle, the diaries are a rich portrait of a fascinating period. "A wealth of fascinating stuff about Monty Python." --- The Independent (UK)
Michael Palin's bestselling diaries of the 1980s. 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'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 seven 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 his fame in the US, he was enticed into once again hosting the enormously popular show Saturday Night Live, in one edition of which his mother makes a highly successful surprise guest appearance. He filmed several journeys for television and became chairman of the pressure group, Transport 2000. His family remains a constant as his and Helen's children enter their teens.
THE FOURTH VOLUME OF MICHAEL PALIN'S BESTSELLING DIARIES A new millennium, and a new chapter for Michael Palin unfolds. With a Hemingway travel project testing his confidence, doubts creeping in about his abilities as a writer, the death of his great friend George Harrison and the last of his children leaving home, the dawn of the twenty-first century sees Michael at his most reflective yet. Over the next ten years, we watch through Michael's eyes as the world reels from the successive shocks of September 11, the 7/7 bombings and the global financial crash. With the warmth and gentle empathy that have endeared him to millions of fans over the decades, Michael documents the day-to-day detail of living in a world buffeted by such powerful winds of change. And amidst this turbulence, one thing remains constant: Michael's irrepressible curiosity and thirst for adventure. These diaries follow his life as he comes and goes through the filming of four blockbuster travel documentaries - Hemingway Adventure , Sahara , Himalaya and New Europe - and reaches the peak of his fame as a beloved TV traveller. And five years on from the last of his children flying the nest, Michael embarks on his greatest adventure yet: becoming a besotted grandfather. There and Back is a new window into the world of Michael Palin, one that reveals more than ever the strength and succour he draws from those ever-present supporting structures in his life: his family, his friendships and, of course, the Pythons.