PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Michael Palin is a scriptwriter, comedian, novelist, television presenter, actor and playwright. He established his reputation with MONTY PYTHON'S FLYING CIRCUS and RIPPING YARNS. His work also includes several films with Monty Python, as well as THE MISSIONARY, A PRIVATE FUNCTION, A FISH CALLED WANDA, AMERICAN FRIENDS and FIERCE CREATURES. His television credits include two films for the BBC's GREAT RAILWAY JOURNEYS, the plays EAST OF IPSWICH and NUMBER 27, and Alan Bleasdale's GBH. In 2006 the first volume of his diaries, 1969-1979: THE PYTHON YEARS, spent several weeks on the bestseller lists. The second volume, HALFWAY TO HOLLYWOOD: DIARIES 1980-1988, was published in 2009. He has also written books to accompany his eight very successful travel series including HIMALAYA and POLE TO POLE. He is the author of a number of children's stories, the play THE WEEKEND and the novels HEMINGWAY'S CHAIR and THE TRUTH.
Palin's style is so fluid, and his sincerity so palpable, that it is often easy to underestimate just how talented he is as a comedian, broadcaster and a writer ... [the diaries] are just too good and he is too modest SUNDAY EXPRESS on THE PYTHON YEARS Delightful and often extraordinarily funny ... An entertaining and at times deeply moving read MAIL ON SUNDAY on THE PYTHON YEARS If anyone writes a diary purely for the joy of it, it is Michael Palin ... This combination of niceness, with his natural volubility, creates Palin's expansiveness THE TIMES on THE PYTHON YEARS 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 on HALFWAY TO HOLLYWOOD His entries are riddled with the astute wit and generosity of spirit that characterise both his performances and his previously published writing TIME OUT on HALFWAY TO HOLLYWOOD 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 on HALFWAY TO HOLLYWOOD 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 on TRAVELLING TO WORK 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 on TRAVELLING TO WORK 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 on TRAVELLING TO WORK
