Michael Palin's Hemingway Adventure

Episode Synopsis

In Chicago, Palin spends a bit of time exploring the city before going to Hemingway's birthplace, Oak Park. After strolling through Hemingway's first home and singing some of his childhood songs , he goes back to Chicago and enters a local shooting range, hoping to be like Hemingway. Mostly, Palin just jumps at the recoil. Hopping up to Michigan, Palin looks at the area where Hemingway first learns to fish, and attempts to catch a few himself. He finds none and ends up hooking the cameraman's ear. Going to the local grocer, Palin asks for things that might have been on Hemingway's grocery list to see if the modern grocer would still carry it. In the process of asking for canned meat, ("We have Spam," the grocer says,) he ends up singing the Spam song from the famous Monty Python aptly named Spam sketch, and then off he goes to Italy. In Italy, Palin goes to the area where Hemingway was wounded and supposedly buried a ten pound note in the ground. After a fruitless search, Palin buries his book in the ground. After attempting to drive an Italian ambulance and become a Red Cross nurse, he ends up travelling into France. Paris, France was "...the city I love most in all the world," according to Hemingway. Now Palin goes through the City of Lights and reenacts perhaps the strangest part of Hemingway's life in 1928- when the writer was reaching for the string for the lavatory, he ended up pulling the skylight string, and the pane of glass crashed on top of his head.