I recently read his “Adolph Hitler: My Part in his Downfall” and enjoyed it tremendously. Any suggestions for further reads?
Well, the rest of the war memoirs, obviously. The volumes tail off a bit, but they’re all funny (and sad).
Others can no doubt recommend preferences amongst the novels and parodies.
There’s the Humphrey Carpenter biography of him just out, but the reviews of it have been distinctly lukewarm.
Excellent! Spike was one of my heroes.
“Adolf…” is the first of his six War Diaries: Adolf Hitler, my part in his downfall; Mussolini, my part in his downfall; Monty, his part in my victory; ‘Rommel?’ ‘Gunner who?’; Where have all the bullets gone?; Goodbye soldier. Read them all in order (they’re very short, and you’ll just fly through them). In my opinion they’re the most superbly evocative account that exists of what it’s actually like to be at war - the excitement, the humour, the bad behaviour, the sex, as well as the terror and boredom and sadness, and his eventual breakdown from bipolar disorder.
Milligan was incredibly prolific; he wrote hundreds of poems, a lot of them nonsensical. He also wrote most of The Goon Show (a surreal radio show from the 1950s) and appeared in it, and several TV series called the Q series. He wrote a few bizarre novels (‘Puckoon’ is a good one).
I have next to me “The Essential Spike Milligan”, published by 4th Estate, which is a selection of his writings that might be a good place to start on his other stuff.
Without doubt - ‘Puckoon’
Puckoon is the best of his books.
It helps a little if you understand something of the partition of Ireland.
It certainly shows the absurdity involved on many differant levels, along with the general incongruity that can be ‘normal’ Irish life.
Remarkably, I’ve heard that Milligan had never been to Ireland when he wrote it - it was based on his family’s remniscences.
Did anyone ever write a bio on Spike? I sure would love to come across one.
(Yes, I’ve read all his war memoirs!)