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Amazon Review
Here is the history of Python in their own words. The assembler, David Morgan isn't himself very funny, sad to say--he begins with that irritating archness that is the very opposite of Python-humour: "if there is a progenitor to credit (or blame!) for Monty Python..." But mercifully he takes a back seat as the book goes on. Instead we have extensive interviews with all the Pythons, except the dead one, as well as supporting material by various collaborators, from Carol Cleveland and Barry Took through to Douglas Adams (who worked with Graham Chapman in the 1970s). There is some other stuff as well, such as an old Michael Palin interview about Terry Gilliam's Brazil which isn't integrated so well, but taken as a whole this book provides unprecedented insight into the history and mentality of Python.There are a great many fascinating facts to be gleaned: for instance, that the team came close to calling themselves "Gwen Dibley's Flying Circus" or that American TV insisted on deleting the phrase "his droppings are enormous" from a sketch about a polar bear invading somebody's garden. But the best thing in this volume is the way each Python emerges as a distinct voice: the slightly stiff intelligence of Cleese, the thorough-going niceness of Palin, the rudeness of Idle, the energy of Jones and the--well, the American-ness of Gilliam. Chapman's voice can be inserted by reading his peculiar memoir, A Liar's Autobiography and in conjunction with those essential texts of scripts from the TV shows, Monty Python's Flying Circus: Just The Words Vol 1 and Monty Python's Flying Circus: Just The Words Vol 2, the entire Python universe can be yours, at least in printed form. --Adam Roberts
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