Product Description

This third wonderful anthology from the Spike Milligan archives uncovers a wealth of previously unpublished material from one of Britain's best loved comedians. The two previous anthologies, 'The Essential Spike Milligan' and 'The Compulsive Spike Milligan', brought together the very best of his stories, cartoons, poems and correspondence, and reminded his fans how deserved his reputation was as a wildly inventive and original comedian. 'The Unpublished Spike Milligan' -- chosen and edited by Norma Farnes, Milligan's manager, biographer and close friend -- is yet more essential and compulsive than these first two collections. It consists of the contents of 'Box 18', a file into which the highly prolific Spike would put his writing and drawings as they came to him, but which never came to be published. The book also draws on previously unseen diaries and letters. As both an original anthology and a personal legacy from a long-gone era, this is absolutely unmissable.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #58724 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-16
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

Review
'The volume does have a peculiar fascination, its tone set by the initial photograph of an elderly Milligan gripping the famous red This Is Your Life book in front of him as if it might afford some kind of defence. Much of the volume reproduces actual pages of handwriting, or handtyping. Naked script and unedited work generate a strange intimacy as one of Britain's most famously depressed and mercurial human beings bounces from mood to mood, some of them apocalyptic. It's hard not to love the ones who make us laugh. And it's hard to get enough of what we love.' A.L.Kennedy, Guardian 'This book gives us the feeling of looking over Spike's shoulder as he worked and is the nearest we are ever likely to get to the real Spike Milligan. It most certainly complements Norma's earlier "Spike: An Intimate Memoir." Most definitely a book for all lovers of Spike's work.' Mike Brown, Chairman of the Goon Show Preservation Society 'This is a book which any Spike Milligan fan pore over for hours.' The Oldie 'For lovers of vintage British comedy.' The Gloss Magazine

Mike Brown, Chairman of the Goon Show Preservation Society
'...the nearest we are ever likely to get to the real Spike
Milligan.'

The Oldie
'This is a book which any Spike Milligan fan pore over for hours.'

Customer Reviews

There's a bl**dy good reason why it was unpublished
It's because it is rubbish. To photo copy Spike's diary from 1972 on days when nothing much was happening and take up a whole page to do it just about shows how Norma Farnes is scraping the barrel to fill a book that should have remained unpublished. My wife bought it me as a Christmas present because she knows I am a great fan of Spike's. I wished she hadn't bothered. Save your money and buy one of his war memoirs. Read that instead and have a great laugh!