Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980-1988 (Volume Two) - Tapa dura

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)

This is a brisk, pithy, amusing read, teeming with the writer's inner life, crammed with high-quality observations . . . and deft ink-pen sketches of his associates (SPECTATOR)

Charming and vastly entertaining (IRISH TIMES)

His entries are riddled with the astute wit and generosity of spirit that characterise both his performances and his previously published writing (TIME OUT, 'Book of the Week')

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)

A fascinating and wry cultural take on the 1980s . . . it's also, when added to volume one, proving to be the most beguiling and revealing of ongoing autobiographies (SUNDAY HERALD)

This is the Michael Palin with whom the public has fallen in love. A man whose ordinary likeability makes us feel we know him, and that he is incapable of nastiness or an outburst of bad temper (SUNDAY TELEGRAPH)

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 (Sam Leith DAILY MAIL)

There are some fabulous and very funny snippets about Alan Bennett and Maggie Smith . . . the behind-the-scenes antics of the Pythons and their wider circle make great reading (OBSERVER)

Halfway to Hollywood is at its best when it moves from Palin's professional life to personal revelation (THE SUNDAY TIMES)

The second volume of Michael Palin's diaries covers the 1980s, a decade in which the ties that bound the Pythons loosened as they forged their separate careers. After a live performance at the Hollywood Bowl, they made their last performance together in 1983 in the hugely successful Monty Python's Meaning of Life. Writing and acting in films and television then took over much of Michael's life, culminating in the smash hit A Fish Called Wanda, in which he played the hapless, stuttering Ken (for which he won a BAFTA for Best Supporting Actor), and the first of his seven celebrated television journeys for the BBC. He wrote much of the dialogue and acted in Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits and acted in his next film, Brazil. He co-produced, wrote and played the lead in The Missionary opposite Maggie Smith, who also appeared with him in A Private Function, written by Alan Bennett. For television he wrote East of Ipswich, inspired by his links with Suffolk. Such was his fame in the US, he was enticed into once again hosting the enormously popular show Saturday Night Live, in one edition of which his mother makes a highly successful surprise guest appearance. He filmed several journeys for television and became chairman of the pressure group, Transport 2000. His family remains a constant as his and Helen's children enter their teens.