Michael Palin

One hundred years after the birth of Ernest Hemingway, Michael Palin sets out to discover the man behind the legend: a hard-drinking womanizer who liked cats and shooting -- but wrote like a dream and left an idelible impression on the twentieth century through his work. Fueled by intensive reading for his bestselling novel, Hemingway's Chair, and, as always, driven by a desire to dis

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

Michael Palin's travel books have repeatedly topped the bestseller lists. In this book he is back at his adventurous best tie-ing in with a major BBC TV series. The book/series will travel through many countries little known to the West, providing opportunities for Palinesque adventures to please the large and loyal audience who followed 80 Days, Pole to Pole and Full Circle.

Having circumnavigated the globe from west to east in Around the World in 80 Days, Michael Palin proceeded to stretch even his endurance with his next journey, travelling due south from the North Pole, arriving five months later at the southernmost point of the globe, the South Pole. The result is Pole to Pole, Palin's account of his extraordinary journey between July and December 19

Full Circle could be subtitled "Palin's Book of Wonders." As he and his television crew undertake what may be the first-ever circumnavigation of the Pacific Rim, they prove that there is an awful lot of the world Palin hasn't seen. In this, the third and most ambitious of Michael Palin's adventures, he travels for almost a year through the eighteen countries that border the world's largest

In the company of an English schoolboy, a group of six creatures who have escaped from the intergalactic Repairs Department with The Supreme Being's map of time holes travels back and forth through the centuries

Martin Sproale is an assistant postmaster obsessed with Ernest Hemingway. Martin lives in a small English village, where he studies his hero and putters about harmlessly--until an ambitious outsider, Nick Marshall, is appointed postmaster instead of Martin. Slick and self-assured, Nick steals Martin's girlfriend and decides to modernize the friendly local office by firing dedicated but elderly emp

An English schoolboy is snatched into another world by the magician scientist Salaman, who forces him to brave underwater terrors in a quest for the priceless Mirrorstone.

Michael Palin's New Europe starts with a simple idea: that only a couple of hours from home is a half of Europe that is for him as unknown and unexplored as the plateau of Tibet or the vastnesses of the Sahara. Cut off for most of his life by Cold Wars and Iron Curtains, Europe's eastern lands are now open for business.And it's as much a voyage of discovery as any of Michael's other j

Michael Palin's epic voyages have seen him circumnavigate the globe, travel from the North to the South Pole and circle the countries of the Pacific Ocean. This was perhaps the greatest challenge yet: to cross the vast and merciless Sahara desert.Shrugging aside the perils of camel stew and being run over by the Paris-Dakar rally, he travels through some of the most spectacular landsca

Over 100 original limericks written with sly wit and bare-faced cheek by comedian Michael Palin.

Script and colour photos from the movie.

Three illustrated scripts from the classic 70s TV comedy by ex-Pythons Palin and Jones, told in the style of Edwardian adventure stories.In Whinfrey's Last Case, the famous detective is on holiday in Cornwall when strange things start happening. Little does he know, the Germans have secretly started the Great War a year early.In Golden Gordon, set in 1935, a Yorkshire footb

A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction of 2011 title The second volume of Michael Palin’s diaries covers the bulk of the 1980s, a decade in which the ties binding the Pythons loosened—they made their last film Monty Pyton’s Meaning of Life in 1983. For Michael, writing and acting took over much of his life, culminating in his appearances in A Fish Called Wanda , in which he played the hapless, stutteri

Michael Palin's first stage play premiered in the West End in 1994 Faced with a family gathering, world-weary Stephen Febble does his best to be difficult. When his daughter, her dreary husband Alan, their precocious child and - not least - the dog come to stay for the weekend it's enough to make him reach for the whisky, and for the sarcasm. The climax arrives on Saturday night when his patient w

After Monty Python's Flying Circus ended, the performers went their separate ways, and writing partners Michael Palin and Terry Jones enjoyed a modest success with Ripping Yarns, a series that gently mocked the kind of stiff-upper-lipped adventure stories that thrilled generations of schoolboys. This book contains the scripts of six classic episodes, beginning with "Tomkinson's Sc

“An ingeniously plotted, beautifully written and hugely enjoyable book that raises tricky questions about... our need for heroes [and] the price of personal compromise.’”—The Daily TelegraphFor the first time since his much-beloved tale Hemingway's Chair was published in 1998, Michael Palin pens a new novel featuring the warm and witty story of an everyman, a tantal

Michael Palin, the No. 1 bestselling author, explores an exotic country now a global superpower.Brazil is one of the four new global super powers with its vast natural resources and burgeoning industries. Half a continent in size and a potent mix of races, religions and cultures, of unexplored wildernesses and bustling modern cities, it is also one of the few countries Michael P

The third volume of Michael Palin's celebrated diaries. TRAVELLING TO WORK is a roller-coaster ride driven by the Palin hallmarks of curiosity and sense of adventure. Michael was not the BBC's first choice for the travel series AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS, but after its success, the public naturally wanted more. Palin, however, had other plans. There was his film AMERICA

Drawn from his published diaries, this is Michael Palin’s account of the making of the Monty Python TV and stage shows, films, books and albums.Monty Python at Work opens on 8th July 1969 with Michael Palin’s diary entry for the first day of filming on the very first episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus . The diary entries that follow – up until the opening of their final feature fi

Volume THE PYTHON YEARS (1969-1979)Michael Palin's diaries begin when he was newly married and struggling to make a name for himself in the world of television comedy. But Monty Python was just around the corner . . .Enjoying an unlikely cult status early on, the Pythons then proceeded to tour the USA and Canada. As their popularity grew, so Palin relates how the group went their separate w

If you've ever wondered what happened to the young fellow from Malta who bought his grandfather an altar…If you're concerned about the camper called Jack who found a huge snake in his pack…And if you suspect that an eccentric landowner called Grey spent Christmas a very strange way but aren't sure precisely what that entailed…Then a dip into Michael Palin's Sackful of Limericks will provide all th

In the early years of Queen Victoria’s reign, HMS Erebus undertook two of the most ambitious naval expeditions of all time.On the first, she ventured further south than any human had ever been. On the second, she vanished with her 129-strong crew in the wastes of the Canadian Arctic.Her fate remained a mystery for over 160 years.Then, in 2014, she was found.<br

THE BOOK BEHIND THE HIT DOCUMENTARY A glimpse of life inside the world’s most secretive country, as told by Britain’s best-loved travel writer.In May 2018, former Monty Python stalwart and intrepid globetrotter Michael Palin spent two weeks in the notoriously secretive Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, a cut-off land without internet or p

In March 2022, Michael Palin travelled the length of the River Tigris through Iraq to get a sense of what life is like in a region of the world that once formed the cradle of civilisation, but that in recent times has witnessed turmoil and appalling bloodshed. In the journal he kept during his trip he describes the war-ravaged city of Mosul and the children he encounters growing up amid its ruins.

From the time, many years ago, when Michael Palin first heard that his grandfather had a brother, Harry, who died in tragic circumstances, he was determined to find out more about him.The quest that followed involved hundreds of hours of painstaking detective work. Michael dug out every bit of family gossip and correspondence he could. He studied every relevant official document. He tr

THE FOURTH VOLUME OF MICHAEL PALIN'S BESTSELLING DIARIESA 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 ref

In February 2025, Michael Palin travelled to Venezuela to get a sense of what life is like in one of South America's most culturally rich, vibrant but also troubled nations.In the journal he kept during his trip he gives a vivid account of the towns and cities he visited, the landscapes he travelled through, and the people he met.Illustrated throughout with colour photograp