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Product Description
About the Author
Spike Milligan was born at Ahmednagar in India in 1918. He received his first education in a tent in the Hyderabad Sindh desert and graduated from there, through a series of Roman Catholic schools in India and England, to the Lewisham Polytechnic.
He then plunged into the world of Show Business, seduced by his first stage appearance, at the age of eight, in the nativity play of his Poona convent school. He began his career as a band musician, but has since become famous as a humorous scriptwriter and actor in both films and broadcasting. Spike received an honorary CBE in 1992.
September 3rd, 1939. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
There's plenty of Milliganesque lunacy here, many many laughs, and not a little pathos, all told in an unabashedly sentimental and frequently endearingly naive tone. From the first page, where "a man named Chamberlain who did Prime Minister impressions got on the radio and said we were at war with Germany" to induction, training and eventual departure for North Africa, Milligan captures the essential unpreparedness and paradoxically indomitable spirit that infused the British war effort. The results are touched both by Milligan's own manic humor and the black depression that was its counterpart, and against which he struggled for much of his life.
A warning- Milligan's prose is addictive. You will not be able to stop with "Hitler", but will be forced into the continuing story in "Rommel? Gunner Who?", "Monty: His Part in My Victory" and "Mussolini: His Part in My Downfall". It just gets more loony, but it's a must-read.
I knew that Spike suffered from depression, and I think in parts it was very apparent. The places that are especially poignant are when he relates a humorous tale, and then explain how he visited the place years later, and how the memories are too much for him to bear. In one particular paragraph he laments: "Oh, Yesterday, how you plague me!"
I love Spike Milligan and his comedy, and have read several run-of-the-mill internet bios on him but his own biography really brings him to life. A great read!
`Adolf Hitler: My part in his downfall' is the first volume of Spike's war memoirs and I read this plus the second volume (Rommel? Gunner Who?) in a single sitting.
In the first volume, Spike puts his own unique spin on his experiences in WW2 starting from training at Bexhill-on-Sea (and not a batter-pudding hurler in sight!) to his posting in North Africa and manages to be laugh-out-loud funny and genuinely sad at the same time. I don't normally go for `war stories' but this is a genuine telling-it-like-it-is tale modified by Milligan's unique genius.
It's a good read in its own right, but any Goon fan will immediately notice the genesis of Goons-type humour in Spike's exchanges with his mate Harry Edgington (we dont' encounter the `other' Harry until the end of book two!)
For best results, read in conjunction with `Rommel? ...' but don't do it in a public place - you'll probably laugh too much!
Very funny book, the author has a great way with words, and a natural humour! Read more
So happens to be Spike Milligan. Read more
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