After the Monty Python years and a decade of filming, writing and acting, Michael Palin's career takes an unexpected detour into travel which will shape his working life for the next 25 years. Yet, as the diaries reveal, he remained ferociously busy on a host of other projects. The diaries open in September 1988 with Michael travelling down the Adriatic on the first leg of a modern-day Around the World In 80 Days for the BBC. Michael was not their first choice, but after its success, the public naturally wanted more. Palin though had other plans. Following the success of A Fish Called Wanda, he is in demand as an actor. His next film, American Friends, is based on his great-grandfather's diaries. Next he takes on his most demanding role as the head teacher in Alan Bleasdale's award-winning drama series GBH. There is also his West End play, The Weekend, and a first novel, Hemingway's Chair, and a lead role in Fierce Creatures, the much-delayed follow-up to Wanda. Michael describes himself as 'drawn to risk like a moth to a flame. Someone grounded... who can be tempted into almost anything.' He duly finds time for two more travel series, Pole to Pole in 1991 and Full Circle in 1996 and two more bestselling books to accompany them. These latest diaries show a man grasping every opportunity that came his way, and they deal candidly with the doubts and setbacks that accompany this prodigious work-rate. As ever his family life with three children growing up fast is there to anchor him. With all his hallmarks of curiosity and a sense of adventure, there are riches on every page with our convivial diarist. He describes everything from a Suffolk sunset to the end of Apartheid and the diaries are filled with the musings and revealing anecdotes, like the time he discovered John Cleese was writing jokes for the Dalai Lama. 618pp, paperback, 32 pages of colour and b/w photos.
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