Ahead of his appearance at the Telegraph Ways With Words Festival, Michael Palin talks to Mick Brown about his first novel in 17 years, The Truth, which tells the story of an idealistic environmental journalist, Keith Mabbut.
The comedian, writer and broadcaster Michael Palin Photo: Geoff Pugh
The Telegraph - 25 Jun 2012
Is it true, I ask Michael Palin, that the Dalai Lama once told him that he would like to be reincarnated as his assistant on his travels? “Well he’s supposed to have said that.” Palin pauses. “Although he goes around as a religious leader, I think he really likes doing what I do, travelling around and meeting people.
“I have this conceit that we had a similar upbringing. He was in Lhasa in the Potala Palace, as he says, poring over atlases and looking out from his ramparts over this barren plain, wondering about the world. And I was in Sheffield – and there was no prospect of travelling then – looking at atlases, maps, conjuring up in my imagination what places might look like. So I’ve always thought the Dalai Lama and I have a lot in common!”
On a rare, sun-blessed day we are sitting in the back garden of Palin’s north London home, a stone’s throw from Parliament Hill Fields.
Palin might be described as Britain’s most popular traveller. His BBC documentaries (a new series on Brazil is coming soon) are regularly watched by audiences of up to nine million, an astronomical figure for travel programmes; while his spin-off books – seven in all – regularly top the bestseller lists, shifting upwards of 300,000 copies a time – and that’s in hardback.
His standing as a novelist is less august. It is 17 years since his first novel, Hemingway’s Chair – about a man running a country post-office battling against modernisation – received tepid reviews. Now comes his second, The Truth, to which the reception is likely to be warmer.
Full story at The Telegraph
Full story at The Telegraph