Spike Milligan was one of Britain's best-loved comics as well as one of the most original. In this reassessment of Spike's life and career, biographer Humphrey Carpenter has - through copious research and access to many of those closest to the great man - unearthed a character who could be as difficult and contradictory as he was generous and talented. The creator of The Goons was to influence a whole generation of comics, yet was never to feel fully valued. His periods of depression were matched by periods of high creativity - there were poems, novels, volumes of biography, as well as a television series and a one-man show as Spike searched for his best means of expression. There was also, as revealed here, his inveterate womanising. Married three times and with four children to whom he was devoted, two illegitimate children were to remain barely acknowledged.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
a fascinating portrait - The Times Literary Supplement
Carpenter has made a very good job, scholarly and entertaining, of turning the adventures of one of Britain's strangest ever talents into a reliable narrative - Word
In this definitive biography, Humphrey Carpenter demonstrates how Milligan was his own worst enemy - a brilliant, impulsive, impatient man who never quite belonged to the human race ... The beauty of Carpenter's biography is that this man of contradictions is laid before us in all his crazy glory. - Sunday Express
This experienced and genial biographer settles down into his familiar, businesslike style, unafraid of addressing the less savoury aspects of his subject. - Observer
This biography takes us at a cracking pace through Milligan's war service, the Goon Show years, his literary career, and his attempts, largely unsuccessful, to repeat the mass appeal of The Goons ... It is all part of a complex personality that Carpenter has done well to grapple into a readable biography. - The Sunday Times
Humphrey Carpenter chronicles all his (Spike's) antisocial and depressive behaviour with tremendous diligence. - Mail on Sunday
Carpenter has raided the BBC archives to reproduce memos and letters which give a vivid picture of life at the Beeb when Spike was at his creative acme. He is good at describing the chemistry and backstage tension of The Goo
Sprache
Verlagsort
Verlagsgruppe
Illustrationen
Maße
Höhe: 242 mm
Breite: 162 mm
Dicke: 41 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-0-340-82611-9 (9780340826119)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Humphrey Carpenter is the author of many biographies and has won the Somerset Maugham Award, the E.M. Forster Award, the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize and was a runner-up for the Whitbread Prize for biography. He lives in Oxford and used to run a jazz band called Vile Bodies.
