Showing titles in Film & TV

John Cleese describes his nerve-racking first public appearance, at St Peter's Preparatory School at the age of eight and five-sixths; his endlessly peripatetic homelife, with parents who seemed incapable of staying in any house for longer than six months; his first experiences in the world of work, as a teacher who knew nothing about the subjects he was expected to teach; his hamster-owning days at Cambridge; and his first encounter with the man who would be his writing partner for over two decades, Graham Chapman.

He is Dexter Mayhew, tall, dark, and (she can't deny it) handsome. She is Emma Morley, bottled red hair, wilfully badly dressed, all principles and no action. Could this be the dawn of the rest of their lives? Or are Dex and Em living proof that - despite an unlikely beginning - men and women really can be just good friends?

After a live performance at the Hollywood Bowl, The Pythons made their last performance together in 1983 in the hugely successful Monty Python's Meaning of Life. Writing and acting in films and television then took over much of Michael's life, culminating in the smash hit A Fish Called Wanda (for which he won a BAFTA for Best Supporting Actor) and the first of his seven celebrated television journeys for the BBC.

Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were a Sixties supercharged couple in an era of supercharged couples. As a pairing they were fantasy figures, impossibly desirable. Liz supple and soft, in perfumes and furs - yet with something demonic and lethal about her. Dick, in turn, with his ravaged, handsome face, looked as though lit by silver moonlight - poised to turn into a wolf. Roger Lewis uses this glamorous and damaged pair as the starting point to tell the story of an age of excess.

From First Footing to Samhain, Fringe Festival follies to whisky lore, Sam and Graham guide listeners through a year of Scottish legends, traditions, historical and contemporary events, sharing personal stories and tips as only these two chalk-and-cheese friends can. As entertaining as it is practical, The Clanlands Almanac is a light-hearted education in Scottish history and culture, told through the eyes of two passionate Scotsmen. The perfect escapist guide, The Clanlands Almanac is intended as a starting point for your own Scottish discoveries.

Werner Herzog is the undisputed master of extreme cinema: building an opera house in the middle of the jungle; walking from Munich to Paris in the dead of winter; descending into an active volcano; living in the wilderness among grizzly bears - he has always been intrigued by the extremes of human experience. From his early movies to his later documentaries, he has made a career out of exploring the boundaries of human endurance: what we are capable of in exceptional circumstances and what these situations reveal about who we really are. But these are not just great cinematic themes.

Robin by Dave Itzkoff shows how Robin Williams struggled mightily with addiction and depression - topics he discussed openly while performing and during interviews - and with a debilitating condition at the end of his life that affected him in ways his fans never knew. Drawing on more than a hundred original interviews with family, friends and colleagues, as well as extensive archival research, Robin is a fresh and original look at a man whose work touched so many lives.

David Attenborough first appeared in front of a television camera in the 1950s when, together with London Zoo's Curator of Reptiles, Jack Lester, he persuaded the BBC to mount and film an animal-collecting expedition. The result was Zoo Quest. Specially recorded for audio, David Attenborough's early adventures are sometimes life-threatening, often hilarious and always totally absorbing. The warmth and enthusiasm that have made him a broadcasting legend are instantly apparent here as he recounts this magical journey.

After first meeting over sixty years ago while filming a costume drama for the BBC, Prunella Scales and Timothy West have enjoyed a partnership like no other. In this book, Tim traces their united steps through life professionally and personally, and covers the highs and lows of caring for Pru since her dementia diagnosis, twenty years ago. As with all things in life, she and Tim have tackled it together, often with a glass of wine in hand and almost always with a smile.

When Brian De Palma agreed to allow Julie Salamon unlimited access to the film production of Tom Wolfe's best-selling book The Bonfire of the Vanities, both director and journalist must have felt like they were on to something big. How could it lose? But instead Salamon got a front-row seat at the Hollywood disaster of the decade.

For years they thought it was just them. Irritated and tormented by everything around them from call centres to nose studs, from speed bumps to ring tones. Then along came the BBC2 series Grumpy Old Men, and the subsequent best-selling book, and they knew they were not alone.

Actor David Suchet recalls his experience of playing Agatha Christie's world-famous detective, Hercule Poirot, for almost a quarter of a century. In the summer of 2013 David Suchet filmed his final scenes as Hercule Poirot. After 24 years in the role, he will have played the character in every story that Agatha Christie wrote about him (bar one, deemed unfilmable) and he will bid adieu to a role and a character that have changed his life.

Hattie Hayridge reads from her autobiography, Random Abstract Memory. Recognised internationally as Holly the Computer in the hit BBC TV comedy series Red Dwarf, stand-up comic Hattie Hayridge is no stranger to the bizarre side of life.

Actors! Engage your mind and your body in order to develop your characters fully. The Lucid Body technique breaks up stagnant movement patterns and expands your emotional and physical range. Through energy analysis, this program shows how to use physical training to create characters from all walks of life - however cruel, desolate, or neurotic those characters may be.

How have films like Ben-Hur, Spartacus, Gladiator, or even a satire like Monty Python’s Life of Brian created our popular perceptions of ancient Roman history? In what ways have they led us astray? And why, despite the occasional box-office flop, do movies set in ancient Rome still have the power to captivate us, and to turn each of us into theater-going history buffs? In these 12 lectures, an award-winning historian gives you a front-row look at the great movies that have shaped ancient Rome’s role in popular culture and memory.

This laugh-out-loud memoir takes listeners backstage and inside the writers’ room of one of America’s best-loved shows. With more than 17 million viewers and more than 70 Emmy nominations—including two wins for best comedy—Everybody Loves Raymond reigned supreme in television comedy for almost a decade.

In Toast on Toast - part memoir, part "how to act" manual - Steven Toast draws on his vast and varied experiences, providing the reader with an invaluable insight into his journey from school plays to RADA and from "It's a Right Royal Knockout" to the Colony Club. Along the way he reveals the secrets of his success. He discloses how to brush up on and expand your technical and vocal skills, how to nail a professional voiceover, and how to deal with difficult work experience staff in a recording studio....

Operation Chastise was one of the most extraordinary episodes of the Second World War, yet it has also become one of the most misunderstood. Max Hastings tells the gripping story of the Dambusters raid, from the invention of the bouncing bomb to the moonlit cockpits of young pilots flying at treetop height through lethal enemy fire. But Hastings also challenges what we think we know about the Dambusters, bringing to light the difficult truths that have often been left out of the legend.

The most authoritative biography of film legend Bruce Lee, who made martial arts a global phenomenon, bridged the divide between Eastern and Western cultures and smashed long-held stereotypes of Asians and Asian Americans. Forty-five years after Bruce Lee’s sudden death at 32, journalist and best-selling author Matthew Polly has written the definitive account of Lee’s life. It’s also one of the only accounts; incredibly, there has never been an authoritative biography of Lee.

The gifted filmmaker, corduroy activist and amateur dentist, Richard Ayoade, first chanced upon a copy of The Two-Hander Trilogy by Harauld Hughes in a second-hand bookshop. At first startled by his uncanny resemblance to the author's photo, he opened the volume and was electrified. Terse, aggressive, and elliptical, what was true of Ayoade was also true of Hughes's writing, which encompassed stage, screen, and some of the shortest poems ever published.