[close] With 150 color photos, this lavishly illustrated guide charts the development of the show from its inspiration — an eccentric owner of a Torquay hotel where the Monty Python team was staying — to the production of the final episode. Biographies of all the principal actors and their comic highlights, background, and subsequent careers are included, along with an A to-Z celebration of the show's major guest stars. This definitive behind-the-scenes tribute to the most hilarious six hours in television history also features many previously unseen photographs and exclusive interviews with John Cleese, Prunella Scales, and Andrew Sachs, along with the series' two directors, John Howard Davies and Bob Spiers. [close]