When Michael was researching for his novel Hemingway’s Chair his interest was stimulated by Hemingway’s appetite for travel and ‘Papa’s’ evocations of the places he knew. Hemingway remains a compelling figure, and Michael’s goal was to revisit Hemingway’s world.

In this wonderful blend of adventure and travel writing, Michael Palin journeys from the forests of North Michigan to the battlefields in Italy and the sites of the Spanish Civil War. He encounters the running of the bulls in Pamplona and the Fallas festival in Valencia, as bar-hopping in Cuba, marlin fishing and daiquiris helps unravel some of the myths surround Hemingway’s life.

This book includes the American West (‘wide lawns and narrow minds’), Idaho, Michigan (‘fly fishing, hunting’), Europe in the First World (where Hemingway was wounded serving in the Ambulance Brigade), Cuba (where Hemingway wrote For Whom The Bell Tolls), Paris in the Roaring Twenties and Spain during the Spanish Civil War, Sun Valley and Key West – where the Hemingway lookalike competition is an annual event.