Showing results by narrator "Michael Palin" in All Categories

Intrepid voyager, writer and comedian Michael Palin follows the trail of two expeditions made by the Royal Navy's HMS Erebus to opposite ends of the globe, reliving the voyages and investigating the ship itself, lost on the final Franklin expedition and discovered with the help of Inuit knowledge in 2014.

Some years ago a stash of family records was handed down to Michael Palin, among which were photos of an enigmatic young man in army uniform, as well as photos of the same young man as a teenager looking uncomfortable at family gatherings. This, Michael learned, was his Great-Uncle Harry, born in 1884, died in 1916. He had previously had no idea that he had a Great-Uncle Harry, much less that his life was cut short at the age of 32 when he was killed in the Battle of the Somme. The discovery both shocked him and made him want to know much more.

In the autumn of 1988, Michael Palin set out from the Reform Club with an ambitious plan: to circumnavigate the world, following the route taken by Jules Verne's fictional hero Phileas Fogg 115 years earlier. The rules were simple. He had to make the journey in 80 days using only forms of transport that would have been available to Fogg.

Michael Palin reads his own account of a journey into a new Europe. Michael Palin's New Europe starts with a simple idea: that only a couple of hours from home are a half of Europe that is for him as unknown and unexplored as the plateau of Tibet or the vastness of the Sahara. Cut off for most of his life by Cold Wars and Iron Curtains, Europe's eastern lands are now open for business - and Michael sets off to discover them.

After a live performance at the Hollywood Bowl, The Pythons 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 (for which he won a BAFTA for Best Supporting Actor) and the first of his seven celebrated television journeys for the BBC.

Michael Palin's diaries begin when he was newly married and struggling to make a name for himself in the world of television comedy. But Monty Python was just around the corner...Enjoying an unlikely cult status early on, the Pythons then proceeded to tour the USA and Canada. As their popularity grew, so Palin relates how the group went their separate ways, later to re-form for stage shows and the celebrated films The Holy Grail and Life of Brian.

In his most challenging journey to date, Palin tackles the Himalayas, the greatest mountain range on earth. It is a virtually unbroken wall of rock stretching 1,800 miles from the borders of Afghanistan to south-west China. Penetrated but never conquered, it remains the world's most majestic natural barrier, a magnificent wilderness that shapes the history and politics of Asia to this day.

The third and most ambitious of Michael Palin's adventures is a voyage of epic proportions - the circumnavigation of the Pacific Rim. He travels for almost a year through the 18 countries that border the world's largest ocean, and is forced to negotiate mountains, plunging gorges, cross glaciers and dodge icebergs. Volcanoes also mark Palin's journey. He climbs one which has freshly erupted and follows great rivers like the Yangtze and the Amazon to some of the most remote places on earth.

In March 2022, Michael Palin travelled the length of the River Tigris through Iraq to get a sense of what life is like in a region of the world that once formed the cradle of civilisation, but that in recent times has witnessed turmoil and appalling bloodshed. It was a journey of sharp, often brutal contrasts. At one moment he would be exploring the old streets of Baghdad or the ancient ruins of Babylon. At the next he would be visiting the war-torn city of Mosul, or learning about the horrific Speicher massacre in Tikrit.

Three years after the epic adventure described in Around the World in 80 Days, Michael Palin was off again. Not circumnavigating the globe, but journeying from one end to the other: the North Pole to the South Pole. Following the 30 degree east line of longitude and using aircraft only as a last resort, Palin and his team endured extremes of heat and cold as they crossed 17 countries on trains, trucks, ships, rafts, ski-doos, buses, barges, bicycles, and balloons.

Michael Palin's epic voyages have seen him circumnavigate the globe, travel from the North to the South Pole, and circle the countries of the Pacific Ocean, but perhaps the greatest single challenge he has faced is his latest: a crossing of the vast and merciless Sahara Desert. As the journey unfolds, the Sahara reveals not only the emptiness of endless sand dunes, but a huge and diverse range of cultures and landscapes, and a long history of civilisation, trade, commerce, and conquest.

Michael Palin is off again, this time to the seemingly desolate Sahara Desert. There's no easy way across, as he and his team discover on their most challenging expedition yet.

In May 2018, former Monty Python stalwart and intrepid globetrotter Michael Palin ventured into the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, camera crew in tow, to gain a glimpse of life in the most notoriously secretive and cut-off nation on earth. His resulting two-part documentary for Channel 5 fascinated millions and won universal plaudits.

In Pole to Pole we join Michael Palin on the second of his epic challenges. Travelling from the North Pole to the South Pole, he experiences every extreme the globe has to offer. As he crosses 16 countries by train, truck, raft, Ski-Doo, barge, balloon and bicycle, he meets a diverse range of fascinating characters and landscapes while his own endurance is tested to the limit. With his customary aplomb, he plunges himself into the local cultures, starring in a crayfish documentary in Novgorod, attending a baby-rolling ceremony at a Cypriot wedding, and consulting an Mpulugu witch-doctor.

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.

Michael Palin journeys to a vast country of unimaginable contrasts - Brazil. An economic powerhouse, it is host to a staggering variety of peoples. He starts his journey in the north, in the remote mountains and forests on the border with Venezuela, and finishes in the south at the legendary Iguaçu Falls. He travels by river-boat, float-plane and foot to visit tribes deep in the jungle, samples life in the agricultural and mining heartland of Brazil, experiences the modernism of Brasília and the heady mix of Rio de Janeiro, and ventures into the favelas.

When Biggles receives a letter from an old wartime chum asking for help, he responds at once. With his comrades Algy, Ginger and Flight Sergeant Smyth, our hero flies to Fort Beaver in Canada, where winter is closing in around the remote airfield. There he discovers that his buddy Wilks is being menaced by a sinister character called 'Brindle' McBain and his cronies.

In Dear NHS, an amazing list of inspirational people come together to share their stories of how the national health service has been there for them and changed their lives in the process. By turns deeply moving, hilarious, hopeful and impassioned, these stories together become a love letter to the NHS and the 1.4 million people who go above and beyond the call of duty every single day - selflessly, generously, putting others before themselves, never more so than now.

In this comic retelling, young Jack foolishly sells his family's cow for a handful of magical beans. Overnight, they grow into a beanstalk that reaches up beyond the blue sky itself, leading Jack into a hilarious series of misadventures with a dimwitted ogre and his extra-large spouse.

Just So Stories - Amusing and fanciful answers to questions of how animals obtained their individual characteristics. "How the Alphabet Was Made"; "How the Camel Got His Hump"; How the First Letter Was Written"; "The Butterfly That Stamped"; "The Cat That Walked by Himself"; "The Crab That Played with the Sea"; "The Elephant's Child"; "The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangeroo"; "How the Leopard Got His Spots"; "How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin"; "How the Whale Got His Throat"; "The Beginning of the Armadillos".