Diaries 1969-1979
by Michael PalinMy brother Paul, knowing my love for all things Python as well as my predilection for things historical, gave me this book for Christmas. I promptly dropped everything else I was reading (or more accurately: not reading) to pour myself into this.
I was not disappointed. Michael Palin's diary is, well, a diary so it can be dry at times and of course there isn't much of what you might call a plot, but that doesn't mean that it wasn't fascinating.
1969 begins just as Michael and his friends were starting to put together a little TV show called Monty Python's Flying Circus. The next decade would see Python go on to enormous success and the diary documents quite a bit of it, all the while providing some very interesting insights into the various personalities involved. Along the way we also get to hear about Ripping Yarns, Faulty Towers, Saturday Night Live, Holy Grail, Life of Brian and more.
If I have one complaint, it's that it ends too abruptly. Now that I've read about how Python was formed and rose to success, and how the films kept the six Pythons together through the 70s; I want to hear how it all unraveled in the 80s. Unfortunately, you won't find that story here. Still, being a fly on the wall for that first decade was fascinating!
