quippe | Entries tagged with diaries

The Blurb On The Back:

Untold Stories is Alan Bennett’s first collection of prose since Writing Home and takes in all his major writings over the last ten years. The title piece is a poignant family memoir with an account of the marriage of his parents, the lives and deaths of his aunts and the uncovering of a long-held family secret. Also included are his much celebrated diaries for the years 1996 to 2004, as well as essays, reviews, lectures and reminiscences ranging from childhood trips to the local cinema and a tour around Leeds City Art Gallery to reflections on writing, honours and his Westminster Abbey eulogy for Thora Hird. At times heartrending and at others extremely funny, Untold Stories is a matchless and unforgettable anthology.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

In an anthology that’s part diary, part straight autobiography, part extracts from his work and part essays, Alan Bennett shows his talent for both comedy and tragedy to great effect. However because there are so many different components to the book, it didn’t really hold together in the sense that there’s no real sense of a common thread running through it. As such, it’s a great book to dip in and out of (and I think it’s a must for Bennett completists) but it is exhausting to sit down and read through it from beginning to end in one sitting.

The Blurb On The Back:

Michael Palin's diaries begin in the late 1960s when, newly married and struggling to make a name for himself in the world of television comedy, he began writing for hugely popular programmes, such as The Frost Report and The Two Ronnies. But Monty Python was just around the corner ...

In this first volume of his diaries he tells how Python emerged and triumphed. Enjoying an unlikely cult status early on, the group then proceeded to tour in the United States and Canada, appearing, like pop stars, at sold-out stadiums coast to coast and on national chat shows. They even stayed in hotels newly trashed by Led Zeppelin, later investors in Monty Python and the Holy Grail/

With this growing fame in the United States came the move from local public broadcasting to national television there and battles over censorhip followed as up to one line in four was cut from the Python sketches, rendering them incomprehensible. Eventually both Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin took the stand in the Federal Court in New York to defend the Pythons' position.

As their popularity grew, so Palin relates how, individually, the Pythons also went their separate ways. John Cleese wrote and acted in the now classic Fawlty Towers, while Michael Palin acted in an adaptation of the memorable Ripping Yarns series. But at the same time, Michael and the others were working to help keep the group together so they could reform for stage shows and the now celebrated series of films including The Holy Grail and The Life of Brian, many of whose lines are known by heart by a considerable proportion of the English-speaking world.

The birth and childhood of his three children, his father's growing disability, learning to cope as a young man with celebrity, his friendship with George Harrison, living through the three-day week and the minder's strike, and all the trials of a peripateticlife are also essential ingredients of these diaries. A perceptive and funny chronicle, the diaries are a rich portrait of a fascinating period.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Interesting, absorbing but not sensational. Palin lives up to his 'nice guy' image in these diaries, but don't go into them expecting new revelations about the Pythons.