lamdha books -
Catalogue of books on Monty Python

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211017 Besley, Adrian (Roland Hall, ed.; Foreword by The Pythons) Monty Python's Flying Circus - Hidden Treasures Carlton Books Ltd., London, 2016. Quarto; hardcover, with illustrated boards and endpapers, with many tipped- and bound-in envelopes containing folded printed material; unpaginated (92pp.) with many full-colour and monochrome illustrations. Minor wear. No dustwrapper as issued. Near fine in a like printed, lightly scuffed, slipcase. Monty Python's Flying Circus: Hidden Treasures is the complete, authorised history of Monty Python, with bits in. Never before has the story of the Pythons been so brilliantly told, in words, rare and unseen photographs and fascinating examples of removable and on-the-page facsimile memorabilia. The 'Dead Parrot' sketch. 'The Lumberjack Song'. 'Argument Clinic'. 'Spam'. Monty Python's Flying Circus was packed with famous skits and classic one-liners, many of which are still globally recognized from the Hollywood Bowl to the University of Woolloomooloo. Their irreverent humour is the yardstick by which others are judged and the adjective 'Pythonesque' has been part of the English language for years. This book delves into the official Monty Python archives for the first time and tells the Monty Python story through photographs, text and props in the shape of removable facsimile memorabilia, including hand-scribbled scripts, never-before-published cue sheets, postcards, programmes and more. Click here to order $34

84355 Bright, Morris, & Robert Ross Fawlty Towers - Fully Booked The Complete Story of the Nation's Favourite Sitcom BBC Worldwide Ltd., London, 2001. Quarto; hardcover, with silver-gilt spine-titling and decorated endpapers; 192pp., with many full-colour photographic illustrations. Previous owner's pencil inscription to the front free endpaper. Else near fine in like dustwrapper. The inspiration for "Fawlty Towers" can be traced back to Tuesday 12th May 1971, when the six Python lads were staying in the Torbay area during a block of filming. The team had been booked into an apparently quiet, respectable place called the Gleneagles Hotel. The owner of the hotel and the man now burdened with the dubious accolade 'the real Basil Fawlty' was clearly dismayed by the arrival of guests of any shape or size - described by Graham Chapman in his autobiography as 'completely round the twist, off his chump, out of his tree'. While the Python team moved to an alternative venue, John Cleese, remained - fascinated by 'the most wonderfully rude man I've ever met'. He even invited his wife Connie Booth to join him to observe the owner's outrageous mistreatment of staff and guests. The rest is history. Click here to order $20

39114 Christie, Ian Gilliam on Gilliam Faber and Faber, London, 1999. First edition. Hardcover, octavo, 294pp, monochrome illustrations. Browned pages; very minor wear to dustwrapper now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Near fine. Terry Gilliam is a famously candid commentator on his own work, and in these specially recorded interviews, he reflects on how his Midwestern childhood and early career as an animator - including his work as the only American member of Monty Python - prepared him to undertake his extraordinary adventures in cinema. His films are distinctively dark, fantastic, and strangely hilarious. From the medieval mock-epic Monty Python and the Holy Grail to the mythic, paranoid worlds of The Fisher King, Twelve Monkeys, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Gilliam has pursued a totally personal, uncompromising vision. This has led to legendary battles with studios and financiers, notably over The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and Brazil, which is now widely considered a classic. The book includes Gilliam's storyboards for the films - a unique glimpse at his creative process - along with his original cartoons and black-and-white photographs throughout. Click here to order $24

93659 Cleese, John So, Anyway... Crown Archetype/Random House LLC., New York NY, 2014. Octavo; hardcover, quarter-bound in papered boards with gilt spine titles; 392pp., with 24pp. of monochrome plates and many illustrations likewise. Dustwrapper. Remainder. New. As Cleese justly observes: "It's a nightmare once comedy stops feeling funny". Click here to order $20

57473 Cleese, John, & Connie Booth The Complete Fawlty Towers Methuen, London, 1989. Hardcover, octavo; illustrated boards; 333pp., monochrome plates. Browned and spotted text block and page edges and spine slightly faded; corners bumped. No dustwrapper. Very good. Click here to order $18

201941 Gilliam, Terry & Ben Thompson Gilliamesque A Pre-posthumous Memoir Canongate, Edinburgh, 2015. Quarto hardcover; illustrated boards; 297pp., colour and monochrome illustrations. Remainder, new. No dustwrapper as issued. Terry Gilliam's 'pre-posthumous' memoir, as it is subtitled, is published shortly after an erroneous obituary of Gilliam appeared in the magazine Variety. Gilliam arrived in London in the summer of 1967, abandoning a promising career in advertising and a covetable house in Laurel Canyon to follow his girlfriend, journalist Glenys Roberts, to England. He was the secret weapon of the Monty Python team - giving a visual identity to the show that similar others lacked. In effect, Gilliam found a way to 'brand' the Pythons, by co-opting the distinctive Sixties-era Victoriana seen on the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper cover or in the clothing store I Was Lord Kitchener's Valet. Gilliam's carnivalesque lettering and his animated cut-outs of stomping feet and bathing beauties tied the sketches together. Gilliamesque is beautiful in itself, recalling the two books that he designed for the Pythons in the Seventies. It also helps Gilliam to explain his films and argues that his own films are tethered in observation: 'What I do is all about the messy, weird, unexpected things that only come out of the way reality works.' Gilliam is a true original and it is reassuring to discover that he knows exactly why he is: messy yet realistic and, like the Spanish Inquisition of his Python days, always unexpected. - from Nicholas Blincoe Click here to order $28

91771 Palin, Michael & Terry Jones The Complete Ripping Yarns Methuen, London, 1990. Quarto hardcover; illustrated boards and endpapers; 277pp., monochrome illustrations. Minor wear; faint spotting to text block edges and cover spine sunned. Very good to near fine. No dustwrapper, as issued. This volume contains all nine scripts from the BBC television series "Ripping Yarns", written by Monty Python members Michael Palin and Terry Jones. It includes such tales as "Tomkinson's Schooldays", "The Curse of the Claw" and "Whinfrey's Last Case".This is the reissue tie-in with the 30th anniversary of Monty Python's Flying Circus. Click here to order $20

99395 The Pythons (Graham Chapman; John Cleese; Terry Gilliam; Eric Idle; Terry Jones; Michael Palin with Bob McCabe) The Pythons Autobiography Orion, London, 2014. Small quarto; hardcover; illustrated boards; 359pp., full-colour and monochrome illustrations. Remainder. New. In 1969 six Englishmen (even if one was Welsh, another an interloping American), came together to create a television programme about an unscrupulous, untrustworthy and frankly slimy theatrical agent named Monty Python. The resultant programme was said to be a Flying Circus. Now, Monty himself tells the whole story of all that stuff, admittedly using the voices of several other people to do so... Click here to order $28