The Essential Spike Milligan

Spike Milligan's legendary war memoirs are a hilarious and subversive first-hand account of the Second World War, as well as a fascinating portrait of the formative years of this towering comic genius, most famous as writer and star of The Goon Show. They have sold over 4.5 million copies. With his lightning-quick wit, unbridled creativity and his ear for the absurd, Milligan revolutionised British comedy, leaving a legacy of influence that stretches from Monty Python's Flying Circus to the work of self-confessed acolytes such as Eddie Izzard and Stephen Fry today. Throughout his life, Milligan wrote prolifically - scripts, poetry, fiction, as well as several volumes of memoir, in which he took an entirely idiosyncratic approach to the truth. In this ground-breaking work, Norma Farnes, his long-time manager, companion, counsellor and confidante, gathers together the loose threads, reads between the lines and draws on the full breadth of his writing to present his life in his own words: an autobiography - of sorts. From his childhood in India, through his early career as a jazz musician and sketch-show entertainer, his spells in North Africa and Italy with the Royal Artillery, to that fateful first broadcast of The Goon Show and beyond into the annals of comedy history, this is the autobiography Milligan never wrote.

Anthology of Spike Milligan's poems and stories for children. Suggested level: junior, primary.

This anthology of Spike Milligan's work comprises of favourites from his classic books, (such as Adolf Hitler: My Part in his Downfall, Goodbye Soldier and Puckoon) as well as scripts from the now-classic Goon show. Interspersing such comic genius is also a collection of letters and his celebrated and liberating writings on depression, demonstrating the diverse talent of a man whose creative output spanned over half a century. A selection of children's poetry and writings (Unspun Socks for a Chicken's Laundry, A Book of Milliganimals, Silly Verse for Kids and much more) reveals Spike's irresistible connection with the childlike imagination and a brillant sense of the ridiculous.

In this last of Spike's hilarious reinterpretations of the classic works of litarature, all the familiar faces of Robert Louis Stevenson's original version appear: Squire Trelawney, Jim Hawkins and Long John Silver. But they are joined by Groucho Marx - and Long John's parrot plays a starring role. This rip-roaring adventure of the hunt for buried treasure unravels faster than Ben Gunn's pants, with plenty of laughs along the way. Rude and irreverent as ever, Spike's rendering of this classic tale is as chock-full of gems as Cap'n Flint's treasure chest.

Puckoon is Spike Milligan's classic slapstick novel, reissued for the first time since it was published in 1963. 'Pops with the erratic brilliance of a careless match in a box of fireworks' Daily Mail In 1924 the Boundary Commission is tasked with creating the new official division between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. Through incompetence, dereliction of duty and sheer perversity, the border ends up running through the middle of the small town of Puckoon. Houses are divided from outhouses, husbands separated from wives, bars are cut off from their patrons, churches sundered from graveyards. And in the middle of it all is poor Dan Milligan, our feckless protagonist, who is taunted and manipulated by everyone (including the sadistic author) to try and make some sense of this mess . . . 'Bursts at the seams with superb comic characters involved in unbelievably likely troubles on the Irish border' Observer 'Our first comic philosopher' Eddie Izzard Spike Milligan was one of the greatest and most influential comedians of the twentieth century. Born in India in 1918, he served in the Royal Artillery during WWII in North Africa and Italy. At the end of the war, he forged a career as a jazz musician, sketch-show writer and performer, before joining forces with Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe to form the legendary Goon Show. Until his death in 2002, he had success as on stage and screen and as the author of over eighty books of fiction, memoir, poetry, plays, cartoons and children's stories.

VOLUME THREE OF SPIKE MILLIGAN'S LEGENDARY MEMOIRS IS A HILARIOUS, SUBVERSIVE FIRST-HAND ACCOUNT OF WW2 'The most irreverent, hilarious book about the war that I have ever read' Sunday Express 'Brilliant verbal pyrotechnics, throwaway lines and marvelous anecdotes' Daily Mail ______________ 'It's all over, Von Arnheim has surrendered and he's very angry.' 'This could mean war . . .' The third volume of Spike Milligan's laugh-a-line account of life as a gunner in World War Two resumes on the eve of victory in North Africa. Now Britain's looniest war hero must combat some of the direst threats a soldier has ever faced - boredom ('Christ, I just thought of Catford'), moving camp ('It's a sort of Brighton with camels'), moving camp again ('We're already somewhere else'), a visit to Carthage ('It's terrible, it's like Catford') and a perilous encounter with the gloriously endowed Mademoiselle Villion ('"Help! massage," I said weakly'). Against the odds, they survive and are sent at last to Italy to be killed... ______________ 'That absolutely glorious way of looking at things differently. A great man' Stephen Fry 'The Godfather of Alternative Comedy' Eddie Izzard 'Manifestly a genius, a comic surrealist genius and had no equal' Terry Wogan 'A totally original comedy writer' Michael Palin 'Close in stature to Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear in his command of the profound art of nonsense' Guardian