Showing results by narrator "Michael Palin" in All Categories

Michael Palin's bestselling diaries before, during and after Monty Python. 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...

Michael Palin reads his own account of a journey into a new Europe. Michael Palin's New Europe starts with a simple idea: that only a couple of hours from home are a half of Europe that is for him as unknown and unexplored as the plateau of Tibet or the vastness 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 Michael sets off to discover them.

The third and most ambitious of Michael Palin's adventures is a voyage of epic proportions - the circumnavigation of the Pacific Rim. He travels for almost a year through the 18 countries that border the world's largest ocean, and is forced to negotiate mountains, plunging gorges, cross glaciers and dodge icebergs. Volcanoes also mark Palin's journey. He climbs one which has freshly erupted and follows great rivers like the Yangtze and the Amazon to some of the most remote places on earth.

TRAVELLING TO WORK is the third volume of Michael Palin's widely acclaimed diaries. After the Python years and a decade of filming, writing and acting, Palin's career takes an unexpected direction into travel, which will shape his working life for the next 25 years. Yet, as the diaries reveal...

Brought to you by Penguin. Some years ago a stash of family records was handed down to Michael Palin, among which were photos of an enigmatic young man in army uniform, as well as photos of the same young man as a teenager looking uncomfortable at family gatherings. This, Michael learnt, was his...

This is the second series of one-off comedies written by the genius behind the smash-hit radio sitcom “Cabin Pressure” – John Finnemore. The first series won the coveted Writers Guild of Great Britain award for Best Comedy. Each show is a comedy perfumed by just two actors - including...

Michael Palin journeys to a vast country of unimaginable contrasts - Brazil. An economic powerhouse, it is host to a staggering variety of peoples. He starts his journey in the north, in the remote mountains and forests on the border with Venezuela, and finishes in the south at the legendary Iguaçu Falls. He travels by river-boat, float-plane and foot to visit tribes deep in the jungle, samples life in the agricultural and mining heartland of Brazil, experiences the modernism of Brasília and the heady mix of Rio de Janeiro, and ventures into the favelas.

Following the hugely popular and successful Around the World in 80 Days and Pole to Pole, Michael Palin set off to meet another challenge: an anti-clockwise circumnavigation of the world's largest ocean, the Pacific.

THE NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER FEATURES 75 STORIES NARRATED BY THEIR AUTHORS Curated and edited by Adam Kay (author of multi-million bestseller This is Going to Hurt), Dear NHS features household names telling their personal stories of the health service. Contributors include Paul...

Winner of the British Book Awards, TV & Film Book of the Year, 2005.

In his most challenging journey to date, Palin tackles the Himalayas, the greatest mountain range on earth. It is a virtually unbroken wall of rock stretching 1,800 miles from the borders of Afghanistan to south-west China. Penetrated but never conquered, it remains the world's most majestic natural barrier, a magnificent wilderness that shapes the history and politics of Asia to this day.

When Michael Palin was researching for his novel HEMINGWAY'S CHAIR his interest was stimulated by Hemingway's appetite for travel and 'Papa's' evocations of the places he knew. Hemingway remains a compelling figure, and Palin's goal was to revisit Hemingway's world. This book includes the...

Michael Palin reads this classic adventure by W. E. Johns, featuring pilot-adventurer James ‘Biggles’ Bigglesworth When Biggles receives a letter from an old wartime chum asking for help, he responds at once. With his comrades, Algy, Ginger and Flight Sergeant Smyth, our hero flies to Fort...

Ukrainian-born humorist, dramatist and novelist Nikolai Gogol is widely believed to have led the realist revolution in Russian literature. His surreal, absurdist satires liberated comedy from its sentimental traditions and influenced writers both within Russia and worldwide, among them Fyodor Dostoevsky, Franz Kafka and Flannery O’Connor.

Three years after the epic adventure described in Around the World in 80 Days, Michael Palin was off again. Not circumnavigating the globe, but journeying from one end to the other: the North Pole to the South Pole. Following the 30 degree east line of longitude and using aircraft only as a last resort, Palin and his team endured extremes of heat and cold as they crossed 17 countries on trains, trucks, ships, rafts, ski-doos, buses, barges, bicycles, and balloons.

In his latest voyage of discovery, Michael Palin reads his own account of a journey into a "new" Europe. He 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 vastness of the Sahara.

Brought to you by Penguin. Brimming with wry humour and fascinating insights, this is a vivid and varied portrait of a complex country. With his eightieth birthday looming, it crossed Michael Palin’s mind that now might be the time to hang up his boots, to lounge about at home, to take things...

Just So Stories - Amusing and fanciful answers to questions of how animals obtained their individual characteristics. "How the Alphabet Was Made"; "How the Camel Got His Hump"; How the First Letter Was Written"; "The Butterfly That Stamped"; "The Cat That Walked by Himself"; "The Crab That Played with the Sea"; "The Elephant's Child"; "The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangeroo"; "How the Leopard Got His Spots"; "How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin"; "How the Whale Got His Throat"; "The Beginning of the Armadillos".

In this comic retelling, young Jack foolishly sells his family's cow for a handful of magical beans. Overnight, they grow into a beanstalk that reaches up beyond the blue sky itself, leading Jack into a hilarious series of misadventures with a dimwitted ogre and his extra-large spouse.

"The Voyages of Sinbad" from the Arabian Nights - Sinbad is a Baghdad merchant who acquires great wealth by going on seven voyages. He describes these to a poor discontented porter, Hinbad, to show him that wealth can only be obtained by enterprise and personal exertion. The Jungle Book - Animal stories set in India. The central figure is a human boy, Mowgli, brought up by a wolf as her cub and instructed in the lore of the jungle. "The Flying Trunk". A tale of a magical trunk that allows the owner to go wherever they wish.

After 20 years as a struggling variety turn and then a prolific scriptwriter and television star, comic genius Marty Feldman found screen stardom with his very first Hollywood role in Mel Brooks’s Young Frankenstein. With his wife, Lauretta, as the power behind the throne, his rise, fall and decline is relayed through bittersweet memories of the past and intoxicated infidelities in the present.