Michael Palin

Michael Palin was born in Sheffield in 1943 and was a member of Monty Python's Flying Circus from its inception in 1969. His transition to travel television was apparently accidental — he was asked to present Around the World in 80 Days (1989) partly because of his affability — but it turned out to be his second major career.

The BBC travel series — Around the World in 80 Days, Pole to Pole, Sahara, Himalaya, New Europe, Brazil — have been among the most watched travel programmes in British television history, and the books that accompanied them have sold millions of copies. The format is simple: Palin travels to a destination, meets people, finds things funny, and brings back an account that makes the audience feel they have been with him.

What makes the books and programmes work is Palin's genuine curiosity. He is interested in people — not as representatives of their culture but as individuals — and his encounters have a warmth that most travel television, which is usually about the place rather than the person, lacks.

His diaries, published as five volumes covering his Monty Python years and his later life, are among the best comic memoirs of the period. He was knighted in 2019. His recent book about his late father's mental illness (The Palin Family at War, 2021) showed a different register entirely.