Is there to anything much to say about Michael Palin, apart from the fact that he's a multitalented man and an extremely nice person? If there is, Jonathan Margolis hasn't found it in this anodyne biography which follows Palin from the early days of Monty Python through films such as Life of Brian and The Missionary to the Hollywood heights of A Fish Called Wanda and an Indian summer as a television traveller extraordinaire; and if you're interested in scandalous anecdotes about John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, et al, or what really happened during the making of Pole to Pole, you'll have to search elsewhere. The story is enlivened by an occasional sparkling one-liner from Palin himself - but paragraphs like the one on page 38, which begins "Interestingly, Palin as a boy was not at all evangelistic about his train spotting . . ." are enough to give even the most devoted Python fan considerable pause.
Arminta Wallace