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The Last Lap

Friday, 13th April, 2018

As anyone whose ever had to write a book to a deadline will know, the closer it gets to that deadline the more reasons you find to make coffee, check your email, catch up on the last 15 minutes of that irresistible podcast, stare out of the window, or if you’re feeling really energetic, go to sleep. I’ve been fighting these psychological battles rather a lot recently, but thanks largely to the grumpy weather, I’ve never been tempted to stray far from my desktop, and I can report that after eight months of concentration, my book is just about complete.

Erebus research trip to the North West Passage August 2017.
Left: Greenland. Taken on the flight from London to Vancouver. Right: Rock stacks on King Leopold Island. It looks silent but home to thousands of birds and one of the noisest places on Earth.

It’s to be called Erebus The Story of a Ship and it’s my first foray into historical non-fiction. I think the reason I’ve been able to complete it at all is because I have grown more and more fascinated by the story. The more detail you unearth, the more you realise what exciting times those were in the 1840’s, when crews crowded onto small ships to explore the Great Unknown.

Left: Arriving at Resolute. One of the most northerly airports in the world. Right: Remnants of the old US refueling station at Resolute. Now living sculptures.

Left: I was given the pilot’s cabin. Right: Walking in the arctic can get quite warm.

The story is about facing the unknown, and Erebus did that not once but twice. Her Antarctic journey was a triumph. Her Arctic journey was a disaster. And three and a half years ago, she turns up again, in pretty good shape, on the seabed in the Canadian Arctic. All the elements for a great tale. I cross my fingers that the eight months writing has not been wasted. I have a terrific editor who is helping me whip it into final shape, so as spring struggles through and our resident flock of house sparrows perform gymnastic mating feats outside my window, I’m feeling in upbeat mood. Watch this space!

Beechey Island. Two of the graves of the first men to die on the Franklin expedition 1846.

The Death of Stalin is out there in the wider world, except if you’re in Russia, where it remains banned. The opening figures in the USA are promising, though I felt a bit like one of Stalin’s victims when I found they’d removed my face from the US poster. Still, maybe it’ll make it easier for me to get a Russian visa!

Hope you’re all well out there. Please keep in touch.

Working with Whitehouse. Or rather not working. Waiting in the Gents Cloakroom to be called on to the Death Of Stalin set. August 2016. Nice suits. Sorry about the plastic bottle!!

Erebus Sails on into the New Year

Friday, 5th January, 2018

Shocked to see that my most recent post was in mid-October. Where has the time gone ? Well, it’s been mostly used up sitting in front of my desktop waiting for words of genius and brilliance to materialise on the screen in front of me. And waiting, and waiting. This writing books thing is unspectacular and very un-visual but, as they say, someone’s got to do it.

The good news is that I passed the halfway point on my Erebus book in early December and my editor has seen it and is still talking to me, which has spurred me on to return to the keyboard and finish the thing. I’m enjoying it. Especially the glass of wine with which I reward myself at the end of each day’s scribbling. Unlike a novel, which is all in your head, the story of the adventures of Erebus in the Polar wastes is in library archives and learned books, and digging out the facts is time-consuming, and seemingly endless. But very rewarding and often exciting.

Left: The waterfront, Porto. Right: The Cathedral at Viseu.

The exhibition Death In The Ice, just finishing at the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, has remarkable video footage of marine archaeologists exploring the sunken wreck of the Erebus, discovered in 2014, 30 feet below the surface of the Arctic waters, and I was lucky enough to meet and share a lunch with Ryan Harris, the leading diver and the first man to see Erebus for 170 years. Every now and then I do have to gasp with wonder, which I hope will transfer to the page ! All being well, it’s still on course for publication in September 2018.

Top: Christmas in the Streets of Viseu. Surprised couple! Bottom: Believe it or not, this is a railway station. Sao Bento Station in Porto.

I took a few days off in early December to accept an invitation to a literary festival at Viseu in Portugal. It’s a small but attractive old town about two hours drive from Porto (now there’s a place worth visiting. Rising steeply from the river and delightful to explore). Viseu endeared itself to me for two reasons. One is that the full title of their event was the Festival of Literature and Wine, and perhaps more importantly, because its football team are called the Academicals. Hamilton Academicals – you have a Portuguese rival! If only they could be drawn together in some European competition!

Left: Fame at last! Viseu, Portugal, December 2017. Right: With Leonor and Luis, my two guardians at the Viseu Festival of Books and Wine.

I’ve one of those “Life On Screen” things coming up – on Sunday night Jan 7th, BBC2 – which reminds me of how old I am and how much I’ve done and how I would like to do it all over again. Hope you’ll enjoy it.

Now, back to the book. Happy New Year to you all.

Death of Stalin Day

Friday, 20th October, 2017

It’s Death Of Stalin Day, as decreed by The Central Commissariat for the Purveying of Entertaining Images to the Glorious Cinemagoers Of Britain!

It’s been strange seeing my (lightly photo-shopped) face staring at me from Underground station platforms. Normally taking the Tube is a chance to immerse myself in a book and forget about life above ground. But there I am – Molotov for a month – or however long the Death of Stalin plays.

What a great group of faces to be alongside. All excellent in the film and absolutely the best to work with. I’d like to have seen Simon Russell Beale up there too, and Andrea Riseborough and Paul Whitehouse and well, everyone else in the film. There’s really no station long enough to do justice to the strength in depth of that cast. And of course, our leader, Armando, who with David Schneider and Ian Martin and Peter Fellowes made sure no-one had a dud line!

I’m relieved that the film’s gone public at last. We’ve had some great reviews but sometimes they can raise expectations. Now it’s over to you. Don’t let my (lightly photo-shopped) face put you off. And take lots of friends!

North-West Passage

London, September 14th, 2017

As you can see, we’ve rechristened this box from “The Latest” to “Palin’s Posts”, to reflect the fact that these are my own, personal updates. If you want to know the very latest then “News” is the box to go to.

I write this as the summer seems to be disappearing fast. I hope you’ve all caught up with it, somewhere, in some shape or form. Rather perversely, I found myself, at the height of August, in one of the coldest corners of the globe, way above the Arctic Circle, on a journey through the North-West Passage.

I set out from Resolute Bay in Nunavut, Canada on a chunky Russian vessel whose name, Akademik Sergey Vavilov, tripped off the tongue. It was a very happy ship, chartered by One Ocean Expeditions to take myself and 95 other Polar pilgrims into the remote area where Sir John Franklin’s expedition disappeared 170 years ago. Despite temperatures hovering around zero most of the passengers had booked way in advance to have the privilege of seeing the high Arctic before the waters freeze over again. They managed to squeeze me in – in the Pilot’s cabin!

Left: Going through the Northwest Passage. Canadian expedition, Russian ship. Right: View from my cabin.

The network of islands in the Canadian Arctic looks small and intricate on a map, but once on the ground the size and scale of the sea channels and the frozen desert land-masses is immense. We had 25 sightings of polar bear, none of them quite close enough for my iPhone to do them justice ! They’re big beasts and move with Fred Astaire-like ease and elegance, conserving energy for the chase.

In my ten days on the Sergey Vavilov I made some good friends and learnt a lot more of what it must have been like for HMS Erebus as she sailed, ever more slowly, into the advancing ice, all those years ago.

Left: Hudson’s Bay outpost. Now abandoned. Right: Onboard the Akademik Sergey Vavilov.

August was a month of hot and cold treatment, as I flew back from frozen north to the sweating south, for a week with the family in Majorca.

Now I’ve completed the major research trips, I must disregard my itchy feet and stay home and get some writing done.

Following The Fleet

Monday, June 19th 2017

Whoever thought writing was a sedentary activity should have been with me these past few weeks. Since my week in the Falkland Islands in March, my researches into the saga of HMS Erebus have taken me to Pembroke Dockyard in Wales, where the ship was built 190 years ago, to the Orkney Islands, the last sight of home for the ill-fated crew of Franklin’s Arctic expedition, and just last week to Hobart, Tasmania which was the base for Erebus’s most successful voyages, into the heart of the Antarctic.

Top: The men who built HMS Erebus in 1826 would have walked through these very same gates at Pembroke Dockyard. Bottom: With my guide, historian Ted Goddard, at Pembroke Dockyard Museum.

A lot of the places where my story is set are remote corners of the world, so it takes a while to get there, but one thing they have in common is an almost unpolluted atmosphere. It’s quite a shock to look up into the heavens above Port Stanley or Western Australia (where I went to a Writers Festival on my way to Hobart) and see the sheer mass of flickering, sparkling light that fills the skies. Its a sight that takes the breath away, and one we big city dwellers never get to see.

Top left: Shop that’s changed hands. Stromness, Orkney Islands. Bottom leftt: Arctic explorer John Rae lies in St. Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall with his gun by his side. Right: Some of the houses at Stromness are so tightly wedged together that they have to shave a bit off the bottom of the building to let people through.

The only trouble is that I know that soon I’m going to have to stop travelling and sit down and write my book. Instead of seeing stars I’ll be seeing spellcheck. Ah, well, I’ve always enjoyed the writing process. Not that it’s always as smooth as it seems. I recently had to sort through my writings that date back more than 50 years, to try and decide which to send to the British Library archive. In the end I gave up and sent everything.

Orkney Islands. Interior of a chapel inside a Nissen Hut built and decorated by Italian prisoners in the Second World War using whatever they could find on the Islands.

So many of the best Python ideas sprang from squiggles and doodles and crossings out, that what I was giving the British Library was bound to be a bit of a mess, but a kind of productive mess, which they would sort out. And they seemed very happy to do that. The fact that all my Python material was hand-written, and then re-written, and then chopped up and inserted into someone else’s sketch didn’t seem to worry them. And it doesn’t really worry me any more. I’m an obsessively tidy person, and yet it’s the untidiness of the Python sketches that reveals the thought processes behind them.

Late afternoon on the Huon River, in Tasmania’s Deep South. The settlement by the water is called Franklin, and they build the most beautiful woooden boats there. They give lessons in boat -building. Check out The Wooden Boat Centre.

In Hobart, capital of Tasmania, even the telephone junction boxes are works of art. Come on London, catch up!

“Don’t tidy up histery’ I wrote in my notebook, and then crossed it out and wrote it again, spelling “history” right.

Hope you all have a really great summer – and for those in the southern hemisphere, a really great winter.

Spring Into Action

Tuesday, April 18th 2017

As the days grow longer, I’m getting up a little earlier and trying to concentrate my mind on the story of HMS Erebus, the book which I have set myself to write in time for publication at the end of next year. I always found libraries rather stuffy when I was at school but now I’m looking at archive material, there’s something exciting, almost thrilling about seeing letters and diaries that were written 170 years ago, often from the furthest ends of the earth.

Talking of ends of the earth, I’m just back from researching Erebus material in the Falkland Islands. It’s such a quiet unspoilt, un-polluted environment that it’s hard to imagine there was a war there in 1982 – the year we were shooting Monty Python’s Meaning Of Life. The echoes of the conflict reverberate. I was there the week after the Falklands Marathon – won by an Argentinian.

Left: At Cape Pembroke, Falkland Islands. One of the most isolated lighthouses in the world. Modern technology has replaced the Keeper who used to live here. Right: Bird life is exceptional in the Falklands – here’s a row of Shags drying out on a rock. No giggling please.

The islands are bare and rather beautiful and I had a great time at the excellent Dockyard Museum and a very comfortable stay at the wondrous Waterfront Hotel. The RAF flew me down there – an 18 hour flight from Brize Norton via Ascension Island, which is an old volcano and the only piece of land sticking out of the Atlantic for hundreds of miles.

Halfway to the Falklands. View out over the lonely volcanic island of Ascension from the garden of my host Marc Holland, the head honcho, or Administrator, to give him his official title, of Ascension Island.

Was only there for a two-hour stopover but just enough time to see the the great sea turtles labouring towards the ocean after laying their eggs. Dragging themselves, exhausted across the sand, but once in the water, off like a rocket. After all, they swam over from Brazil to lay those eggs. I’d never seen anything like this before, which just shows that if you’re curious enough, travelling is never over. Watch this space!

A Weekend In Pakistan

Saturday, February 25th, Lahore

I’m just back from the Lahore Literary Festival in Pakistan. I first visited the city in 2003 when we were filming the Himalaya series for the BBC. I fondly remember its noise and beauty and bustle and when Razi Ahmed invited me to the Literary Festival I was instantly tempted. I flew to Lahore last Thursday night. Unfortunately that morning there had been another explosion in the city and the police were worried that the big Alhamra Arts Centre might be a target, so the Festival had been transferred to a local hotel. Despite the news that the explosion was an accident, not a terrorist attack, the police were taking no risks and with only 15 hours to go to the opening event, the location had to be changed yet again and the entire three-day programme reduced to one day.

The fact that the Festival took place at all was a triumph for Razi and his team. Overnight they transformed the 135-year old Faletti’s Hotel into three auditoriums and space for a few thousand people to congregate.

At the Festival with fellow delegate Salam Kawakibi.

And it worked. I was on stage with novelist Kamila Shamsie at 10 o’clock on Saturday morning. In the audience were some of the many Monty Python fans from all over Pakistan. Despite all the security concerns I was welcomed and made to feel at home and the perfect weather and great cast of fellow writers made it a memorable day in Lahore. It ended when a PowerPoint presentation of highlights from my Himalaya series was brought to a Pythonically abrupt halt when a crouched figure emerged from the audience and handed me a piece of paper with a message that read : “Sir, Time Is Over. Please Finish. Thanks. Lahore Police” I assumed this was something John Cleese had organised and made a joke about going on for another hour. Within ten seconds my mike was unplugged and the power supply switched off. It wasn’t a joke. The Lahore Police had the last word.

By then the Festival had done its work and brought thousands of people together on a beautiful day in a fine city to hear about books and writing and to exchange ideas and meet other people with open minds. The great sadness was that many local writers had their sessions cancelled because of the shortening of the event.

I only hope that the authorities in Lahore realise what a treasure the Literary Festival is for the city and will persevere with it in the future.

Literary Festivals are ten a penny these days but the Lahore Literary Festival is something special. Long may it last.

Sightseeing in Lahore. Wazir Khan Mosque, one of the many architectural wonders of the city.

Python and Pakistan

One of the most extraordinary stories about the early life of Python is that Pakistan was one of the first countries to buy Monty Python’s Flying Circus from the BBC. After showing the first 13 episodes they complained bitterly that there were no clowns, acrobats, bareback riders or performing elephants in the Circus and demanded their money back. So it was very satisfying for me to find that nearly fifty years on there are so many Pakistanis who love the real thing and who know the Dead Parrot sketch off by heart.

Traffic Jam, Lahore. Rear view of Pakistani painted truck.

Cold Start

January 22nd, 2017, Sunday morning, London

Trawling the morning’s newspaper for pages without Trump triumphant I learn that today London is colder than Iceland. Which could be a good omen. I’ve just taken on a commission to produce a book about HMS Erebus, a modest three-master, which became the flagship on two of the most dramatic Polar journeys in history. The first, in 1839, to Antarctica, where Erebus, and her sister ship Terror, sailed perilously between the icebergs, reaching further south than any vessels had been before. The second six years’ later, to search for the North-West Passage, ended in disaster, when both ships, and 129 men, disappeared off the face of the earth. In 2014, almost 170 years since she was last seen, HMS Erebus was miraculously re-discovered, her hull bruised but intact, beneath the waters of the Canadian Arctic.

HMS Erebus was thought to have met her end trapped in arctic ice (Picture: Getty)

The story of the life, death and resurrection of the Erebus has become something of an obsession and I’ve already started research, which will soon involve travelling, like Erebus did, to far-flung corners of the world.

It’ll keep me busy in the year ahead, but there’ll be lots of other things to do, starting with a visit to Pakistan (for the first time since the Himalaya series ) for the Lahore Literary Festival in February, and appearances at The York Festival on the 19th March, and The Radio Times Festival at the BFI on the 7th April.

A lot of last year was spent waiting. This year I can’t wait to get on with it.

Ten Days in Taiwan

Friday, November 11th, 2016

Just back from my first ever visit to the island of Taiwan. After the hiatus caused by the production difficulties on The Man Who Killed Don Quixote I needed to make plans for some other outlet for my general restlessness. I needed to get back on the road. My friend and series photographer Basil Pao lives in Hong Kong, less than two hours flying time from Taiwan. Come and see it for yourself he said. You’ll be surprised.

A small island making cell phones wasn’t exactly what I had in mind for my first long-distance trip in a couple of years, but I like a challenge, and I’m glad I took it on. Taiwan is fascinating. Half is an international workshop and half is a huge and rather beautiful national park, with great trails through high mountains and spectacular forests (in which some of the trees have been standing since before the birth of Christ) If you’ve time to dawdle, the street food is superb and if you’re in a hurry, a high-speed train can take you almost the entire length of the island in two hours. And where else would you find a bird called the White-Whiskered Laughing Thrush? I told it some of John Cleese’s old material and it flew off.

I’ll give a fuller account of my adventure (hopefully with some of Basil’s pictures) when I’ve had time to digest an exhilarating week in the country the early Portuguese explorers christened Formosa “the beautiful island”. Meanwhile here are a couple of snaps taken on the road. A selfie of yours truly taken at the top of a mountain trail (around 2,500 metres) and a view of the rather idyllic Sun Moon Lake before the tourists boats are out.

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A Yorkshireman In Paris

Wednesday, October 12th, 2016

Having recently been described in this week’s Radio Times as “a relentlessly cheery Yorkshireman”, I bought a new coat and a pair of shades and took myself off to Paris to show that I’m in fact a cool and moody existentialist. This disguise, modelled here in the Tuileries Gardens, certainly wouldn’t have impressed anybody in my home county. A couple of years ago I was crossing West Street in Sheffield, wearing what I thought was a pretty stylish Armani shirt without a collar, when two burly locals passed me. One nodded at me, nudged his friend and I heard him say : “ ‘Ello, bourgeois are back”.

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My Paris trip, to stay with well-travelled writer and photographer Michael Katakis, also served to kick-start the travelling bug (sorry about the mixed metaphor). This summer, after finishing my stint as Molotov in The Death Of Stalin, I was to be seen at riding lessons up in Trent Park, reciting Spanish in Gospel Oak, learning lines on holiday in Majorca, and generally trying to get myself prepared to tilt at windmills. By mid-September it was pretty clear that I wasn’t going to be getting into Don Quixote’s saddle this year. With The Man Who Killed Don Quixote postponed I was able to follow up on some documentary ideas, all of which would take me to parts of the world I’d never seen. Can’t say more at the moment but it looks as if I’ll be dusting off my boots and checking the date on my anti-diarrhea pills in spring next year.

Though I was only in Paris for 24 hours the change of scenery worked wonders. In amongst all the fuss about Hard Brexit (which sounds like something you’d complain about at a hotel reception) and the delusion that foreigners are somehow bad for us, it was a delight and pleasure to walk the streets of this most civilised city and be reminded that enjoying doing things differently is not bad, it’s essential.