Showing results by narrator "Michael Palin" in All Categories

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.

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 May 2018, former Monty Python stalwart and intrepid globetrotter Michael Palin spent two weeks in the notoriously secretive Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, a cut-off land without internet or phone signal, where the countryside has barely moved beyond a centuries-old peasant economy but where the cities have gleaming skyscrapers and luxurious underground train stations.

In his major new work, Michael Palin - former Monty Python stalwart and much-loved television globe-trotter - brings to life the world and voyages of HMS Erebus, from its construction in the naval dockyards of Pembroke, to the part it played in Ross’s Antarctic expedition of 1839-43, to its abandonment during Franklin’s ill-fated Arctic expedition, and to its final rediscovery on the seabed in Queen Maud Gulf in 2014.

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.

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.

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 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.

One spring day, Mole peers out from his underground home to find a marvellous world awaits him. As the seasons pass, he picnics on the riverbank with Ratty, accompanies Toad on a chaotic caravan adventure, and even braves the snowy depths of the fearsome Wild Wood in search of Badger. But when Toad's mischievous ways finally land him in trouble, can his friends come to his rescue and recapture Toad Hall from a gang of sneaky stoats and wheedling weasels?

After 20 years as a struggling variety turn and then a prolific scriptwriter and television star, comic genius Marty Feldman found screen stardom with his very first Hollywood role in Mel Brooks’s Young Frankenstein. With his wife, Lauretta, as the power behind the throne, his rise, fall and decline is relayed through bittersweet memories of the past and intoxicated infidelities in the present.

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.

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.

In his latest voyage of discovery, Michael Palin reads his own account of a journey into a "new" Europe. He starts with a simple idea: that only a couple of hours from home is a half of Europe that is for him as unknown and unexplored as the plateau of Tibet or the vastness of the Sahara.

"The Voyages of Sinbad" from the Arabian Nights - Sinbad is a Baghdad merchant who acquires great wealth by going on seven voyages. He describes these to a poor discontented porter, Hinbad, to show him that wealth can only be obtained by enterprise and personal exertion. The Jungle Book - Animal stories set in India. The central figure is a human boy, Mowgli, brought up by a wolf as her cub and instructed in the lore of the jungle. "The Flying Trunk". A tale of a magical trunk that allows the owner to go wherever they wish.

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".

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.

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.

Following the hugely popular and successful Around the World in 80 Days and Pole to Pole, Michael Palin set off to meet another challenge: an anti-clockwise circumnavigation of the world's largest ocean, the Pacific.

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 learnt, 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 about him.