Goodbye Soldier

Description

Reissued for the first time since publication, Volume Six of Spike Milligan's outrageous, hilarious, legendary War Memoirs 'My namer is Maria Antonoinetta Fontana, but everyone call me Toni.''I'm Spike,' sometimes known as stop thief or hey you.'Yeser, I know.' The sixth volume of Spike Milligan's off-the-wall account of his part in World War Two sees our hero doing very little soldiering. Because it's 1946. Rather, he is now part of the Bill Hall Trio - a 'Combined Services Entertainment' inflicted on unsuspecting soldiers across Italy and Austria - and is largely preoccupied with the unbearably beautiful ballerina, Ms Toni Fontana ('Arghhhhhhhhh!). But he must enjoy it while he can before he is demobbed and sent home to Catford - so he does ...

Spike Milligan was one of the greatest and most influential comedians of the twentieth century. Born in India in 1918, he served in the Royal Artillery during WWII in North Africa and Italy. At the end of the war, he forged a career as a jazz musician, sketch-show writer and performer, before joining forces with Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe to form the legendary Goon Show. Until his death in 2002, he had success as on stage and screen and as the author of over eighty books of fiction, memoir, poetry, plays, cartoons and children's stories.

The most irreverent, hilarious book about the war that I have ever read * Sunday Express * Brilliant verbal pyrotechnics ... throwaway lines and marvelous anecdotes * Daily Mail * Desperately funny, vivid, vulgar * Sunday Times * Close in stature to Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear in his command of the profound art of nonsense * Guardian * Milligan is the Great God to all of us -- John Cleese The Godfather of Alternative Comedy -- Eddie Izzard That absolutely glorious way of looking at things differently. A great man -- Stephen Fry Manifestly a genius, a comic surrealist genius and had no equal -- Terry Wogan A totally original comedy writer -- Michael Palin