The Many Faces of Terry Jones: Python, Historian and Polymath
Terry Jones, best known as one of the six members of the legendary Monty Python comedy troupe, was far more than just a funny man in drag. A new biography by Robert Ross titled Seriously Silly: The Life of Terry Jones paints an affectionate portrait of this remarkable polymath whose talents stretched from medieval scholarship to children's literature and environmental activism.
From Wales to the Flying Circus
The book begins with Jones's early childhood in Wales, before his family's move to Surrey - a relocation that apparently caused him lasting disgruntlement. His academic journey took him to Oxford University, where his comic style began to take shape under influences like English tutor Graham Midgley, whose lecture titles included 18th-century poets More Minor Still.
Jones became involved with the Oxford Revue before moving to London, where he and Michael Palin began working as comedy writers at the BBC. The other future Pythons gradually came together, eventually forming what the biography describes as a comedy boyband of six that would revolutionise British humour.
Beyond Python: The Renaissance Man
Jones's interests extended far beyond comedy. He started an ecology magazine called Vole, founded his own real-ale brewery, and even wrote jokes for Cliff Richard. As a columnist for The Guardian, he began one 2011 piece with: In the 14th century there were two pandemics. One was the Black Death, the other was the commercialisation of warfare.
His scholarly work included reinterpreting Chaucer's Knight's Tale, arguing that the poet presented the hero's fighting satirically as something deplorable. Later, he drew from Norse mythology for his beloved children's book The Saga of Erik the Viking, where he insisted on including historically inaccurate horned helmets despite his illustrator's protests.
Never-Produced Python Gems and Personal Life
The biography reveals fascinating details about Python projects that never came to fruition. Jones originally considered making the film of Erik the Viking with the Muppets, while in the 1990s there was talk of Monty Python and the Last Crusade, featuring the Pythons as aged knights with archive recordings of Graham Chapman as the voice of King Arthur's ashes.
Perhaps most intriguing is the aborted Monty Python's Third World War project, which Ross suggests would be particularly relevant viewing today. The book also covers Jones's personal life, including his relationship with an Oxford student forty years his junior who later became his second wife.
The biography concludes with Jones's later years, during which he battled frontotemporal dementia that gradually deprived him of speech. Despite this, Ross continued to join him for half a pint in the pub. Michael Palin contributes movingly about their friendship: The loveliest of collaborations was working with Terry. It just sort of grew and grew through a friendship. Terry was a chum.
Upon his death, Jones's brain was flash-frozen and donated to science - an ending that itself sounds like the beginning of another Monty Python sketch, bringing full circle the life of a man who remained seriously silly to the very end.
