Michael Palin

Palin's Posts

Select a year
All 202320222021202020192018201720162015
Select a Palin's Post
Get On With It! Helen Step Forward, Harry Palin! The Beautiful Game That Time Of Year Let’s Hear It For Iraq A Memory On The Road Again – again Nights in Belfast On Squatting Perfect Matches Things To Be Proud Of Change Of Heart The Bishops Finger A Day For The Diary Walk, Don’t Run London Lockdown Inspirational Eccentricity Marking Time Big Day For Erebus Fans Out Of The Window Pre-April Fool History Doesn’t Always Repeat Itself Knowing Terry Nancy Jones Ticker Tapes 3 Fifty Years On Ticker Tapes 2 The Ticker Tapes Bournemouth and Beyond Getting On A Bit End Of Term Surprise Down Under and Underground Archives and Anniversaries Erebus Sails On On The Road Again Calm Before The Storm Busy Summer The Last Lap Erebus Sails on into the New Year Death of Stalin Day North-West Passage Following The Fleet Spring Into Action A Weekend In Pakistan Cold Start Ten Days in Taiwan A Yorkshireman In Paris Brazil and Why the Thought of It Cheers Me Up June goes out with a groan May on The Way Still Travelling Martin Honeysett and Dr. Fegg Farewell to the Thirty Years Tour Warm in London Eurostar to Paris

Palin's Posts

Eurostar to Paris

There I was thinking that I’d give up travelling and have a quiet year at home when along comes 2015. The finger beckons and suddenly I’m sending more postcards than ever.

Eurostar to Paris in January to celebrate our daughter’s birthday, opened the floodgates to a travelling spring. My Live On Stage tour opened in New Zealand in February, then across to Adelaide, Perth, Sydney, Brisbane and a last night in Melbourne in March. Then a visit to old friends in Scotland – including the legendary Hamish MacInnes, who was responsible for throwing the Knights who got their questions wrong in Monty Python and The Holy Grail into the Gorge Of Eternal Peril. And he was head of Mountain Rescue at the time.

To New York in April for a Monty Python celebration at the Tribeca Film Festival, which reminded us that we are all 40 years older than when we tried to cross The Bridge Of Death. Then just time to get my bags unpacked and packed again before leaving for Italy to film a one-hour documentary for BBC Four, currently called Michael Palin’s Quest for Artemisia Gentileschi. It’s a collaboration with my crack team from BBC Scotland – Eleanor Yule director, Mhairi McNeill producer and Carlo D’Alessandro on camera – with whom I made Palin in Wyeth’s World (BBC Two, 2013).

Shop in Florence that sells everything including New York street signs.

For a long time Artemesia was a well-kept secret. As a woman, painting in the early 17th century, she was not given the attention that her male counterparts received. Now that she’s being rightly discovered as a painter of unforgettable images, people want to know what she was like. All will be revealed later this year, but what I can say, after a fortnight’s filming in Florence, Rome and Naples, is that to call Artemisia Gentileschi a force of nature is an understatement. Be prepared.