Travelling to Work

To celebrate the publication of volume three of his Diaries, Travelling to Work 1988-1998, one of the most popular figures of our time, acclaimed actor, writer and comedian Michael Palin, announces his first ever one-man stage tour, looking back at twenty-five years of exploring the world and nearly fifty years in radio, television, books and films.

The tour will cover 21 venues across the UK, beginning on September 7 and ending in Sheffield on October 22 2014. In the first half of the show Michael takes us on a whistle-stop tour of the globe. Highlights and lowlights, adventures and cock-ups, beauties and beasts, wonders and wash-outs, all vividly illustrated with a special selection of photos and footage shot during the eight BBC TV travel series that began with Around The World in Eighty Days.

In the second half of the show, Michael takes a free-wheeling look back at the other side of his life - the love of comedy that took him from schoolboy in Sheffield to Python at the O2. He will talk about the joy of writing and acting that has produced two novels and taken him from a dead parrot salesman to the headmaster who fights back in GBH.

Michael's support for bookshops is well-known. On the tour the local bookshop will have signed copies of Michael's new volume of Diaries at the theatre on the night of the show. Travelling to Work - Diaries 1988–1998 will be published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson on 11 September, priced £25 for hardback and £12.99 for e-book. See below for the list of bookshops.

Palin says, "The Travelling to Work Diaries cover an extraordinarily busy time of my life. I was trying things I'd never done before, pushing myself beyond the predictable to novels and plays and a whole new career as a television traveller. I like to think that the Travelling to Work tour is in the same spirit of adventure and experiment. It will be my first solo tour and I see it as a chance to meet audiences all over the country and talk about the only consistent thread in my working life - the irresistible urge to do something completely different."

Travelling to Work Autumn 2014 Tour Dates

Michael’s reputation was established with Monty Python’s Flying Circus and Ripping Yarns. His work also includes several films with Monty Python, as well as The Missionary, A Private Function, an award-winning performance in A Fish Called Wanda, American Friends and Fierce Creatures. His television credits include two films for the BBC’s Great Railway Journeys, the plays East of Ipswich, Number 27 and Alan Bleasdale’s GBH. He has written bestselling books to accompany his eight very successful travel series, Around the World in 80 Days, Pole to Pole, Full Circle, Hemingway Adventure, Sahara, Himalaya, New Europe and Brazil. He is the author of a number of children’s stories, the play The Weekend and two novels, Hemingway’s Chair and The Truth. He has also published two volumes of his acclaimed diaries. 1969 – 1979: The Python Years (2006) and Halfway to Hollywood, Diaries 1980 – 1988 (2009).

Michael was made a CBE in 2000 and in 2013 he was awarded the BAFTA Fellowship. Between 2009 and 2012 Michael was President of the Royal Geographical Society. He has just finished filming a three-part drama for the BBC called Remember Me which will be broadcast later this year. In July, Michael will be performing a ten-night sell-out show at the 02 Arena with his fellow Pythons – Monty Python Live. He lives in North London with his wife Helen.

WWW.PALINSTRAVELS.CO.UK / WWW.ORIONBOOKS.CO.UK

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