● Michael Palin is not only the most modest member of the Monty Python team — he didn’t order a bigger hat when fame came knocking. He is also the most rounded, having excelled as an actor (rather than performer), globe-trotting traveller, and writer on many subjects. Now, in his eighty-first year, his curiosity remains undimmed, as listeners to Radio 4’s Book of the Week may confirm.
It’s a good spot for a writer, 9.45am every, however, was a feast. Ostensibly it was a tribute to Lance Corporal H.W.B. Palin, slain on the Somme in September 1916. But he did not merely recreate the life of a man whose body was “known unto God”. Through years of research and hard writing he created a life.
