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Third volume of Michael Palin's celebrated diaries.
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 and Erebus, the Story of a Ship. 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.
Palin shows himself in these diaries to be an acute observer as
well as a champion curator of an anecdote ... The best sort of
convivial read, like having a gossip with an old friend over a few
drinks ... Travelling to Work is a delight. It is a book you find
yourself devouring in a great greedy session
*SUNDAY TIMES*
Michael Palin introduces his splendid new volume of diaries by
saying that he was juggling three careers during the decade it
covers... the life it records is so phenomenally varied... How he
finds time to update his diary is a mystery. Update it he does
though and he does so with fluency, wit, glowing affability and
lightning flashes of anger... Weaving between observation and
introspection, he comes up with a pithy phrase to describe
everything from a Suffolk sunset to the end of apartheid but he
sparkles most brightly when evoking the speech and the personality
of his associates
*SUNDAY EXPRESS*
Filled with amusing and revealing anecdotes (like the time he
discovered Cleese was writing jokes for the Dalai Lama). The book
also charts Palin's reincarnation as a television adventurer and
opens with him embarking on the filming of Around the World in 80
Days
*OBSERVER FOOD MONTHLY*
This volume takes in a remarkably prolific period... As well as
four BBC travel series not covered in depth since he has written
separate books on them, the decade includes promotional work for A
Fish Called Wanda; the making of Fierce Creatures, a sequel of
sorts; the tortuous progress towards getting American Friends, a
film about his great-grandfather, off the ground; a role in a Nora
Ephron film (eventually left on the cutting-room floor); and a
debut novel, Hemingway's Chair, written in only four months. There
also frequent rows with the other Pythons about a reunion. As the
book ends John Cleese is keen on them putting on a show at the
Millennium Dome. It would take them another 15 years to do it
*THE TIMES*
These diaries record an astonishingly successful career . . . Yet
he never becomes objectionable; he always keeps that saving touch
of everyman, if not quite Mr Pooter, a nobody . . . These diaries
are remarkably good company, always dependable, never upsetting:
safely enjoyable, page after page. And that's quite a triumph of
tone
*EVENING STANDARD*
At first you think how lucky Palin is to be living his life. Then,
gradually, you see the dark side. He connects with you in a lovely
way, which is very calming
*THE SPECTATOR Books of the Year*
This amiable, intelligent record has a cumulative appeal
*INDEPENDENT*
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