Tonight: Michael Palin's New Travelogue

First, Michael Palin took us around the world in 80 days. Then he traveled from pole to pole. Later, it was full circle around the Pacific Ocean. Now, he brings us his latest ripping yarn: Michael Palin's Hemingway Adventure.

Inspired by his re-reading of Hemingway's works while researching his own new novel, Palin visits the sites of Hemingway's life and books, from the American midwest of his birth, to Europe, where he drove an ambulance on the front lines in World War I, lived the expatriate life, and enjoyed the bullfights, to Africa, where he hunted big game, to Key West and Cuba, and the American West. Along the way Palin actually meets with several figures immortalized in Hemingway's books.

And it's a most excellent website, too.

Palin writes:

Hemingway's world was close and uncomfortable and itchy and sweaty and frequently exhausting. It was, I felt, the real thing. To experience it would require the ability to absorb a little punishment, it would demand an open mind and a degree of recklessness. But it could and should be done. This stuff was too good to be wasted on exams, I must be bold and fearless and go out there and do it for myself.

Unfortunately, in the late 1950s there wasn't much call for provincial English schoolboys to carry mortars up Spanish hillsides, and though I had a goldfish I hadn't fought for seven hours to land it.

So boldness and fearlessness were put on hold and I packed the books into the back of the car and looked out at the Newark Bypass as my father drove us back to Sheffield, holidays over for another year. But something was different. After reading Hemingway I felt I'd grown up a little. Lost my literary virginity. Books would never be quite the same again.

Life, on the other hand, was just the same.

I haven't read much (any?) Hemingway myself, but Palin's childhood dreams sound all too familiar.