Stephen Fry

This international bestseller is an “enormously entertaining” boyhood memoir by the British actor and comedian (The New York Times).
 
Since his PBS television debut in Blackadder, multitalented writer, actor, and comedian Stephen Fry has earned many fans with his idiosyncratic wit. In this memoir, a number-one bestseller in Britain, he shares the story of his youthful years in his typical frank, funny...

But when he arrived at Cambridge he was a convicted thief, an addict, and a failed suicide, convinced that he would be expelled. Instead, university life offered him love and the chance to entertain. He befriended bright young things like Hugh Laurie, now the star of House, and Emma Thompson. This is the hilarious and utterly compelling story of how the Stephen the world knows (or thinks it knows) took his first steps in the worlds of theater, radio,...

"I've suffered for my art, now it's your turn." So begins the story of Ted Wallace, unaffectionately known as the Hippopotamus. Failed poet, failed theater critic, failed father and husband, Ted is a shameless womanizer, drinks too much, and is at odds in his cranky but maddeningly logical way with most of modern life. Fired from his job at the newspaper, Ted seeks a few months' repose and free liquor at Swafford Hall, the country mansion of his...

Is English an innately playful language? Are word games good for you? Do we divide into number and word players? And could Scrabble have been invented in any other language?

In this special programme, Stephen examines many word games, and we'll hear some familiar voices playing unfamiliar games—Sheila Dillon from The Food Programme plays Font or Cheese against miscellanist Ben Schott. Phill Juptitus talks about his

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Inventing flying contraptions, war machines and studying cadavers, Leonardo da Vinci tackles the meaning of life itself with the help of French princess Marguerite de Nevarre.

"By his early thirties, Stephen Fry--writer, comedian, star of stage and screen--had, as they say, "made it." Much loved on British television, author of a critically acclaimed and bestselling first novel, with a glamorous and glittering cast of friends, he had more work than was perhaps good for him. As the '80s drew to a close, he began to burn the candle at both ends. Writing and recording by day, and haunting a neverending series of celebrity...

Publisher Annotation: Once upon a time there was a tiny kingdom called Cornucopia, as rich in happiness as it was in gold, and famous for its food. From the delicate cream cheeses of Kurdsburg to the Hopes-of-Heaven pastries of Chouxville, each was so delicious that people wept with joy as they ate them. But even in this happy kingdom, a monster lurks. Legend tells of a fearsome creature living far to the north in the Marshlands... the Ickabog. Some...

"Nikolas, the boy who would one day be known as Santa Claus, goes on a life-changing quest to the North Pole"--

Actor and writer Stephen Fry explores his passion for the world's most controversial composer, but can he salvage Richard Wagner's music from its dark associations with anti-Semitism and Hitler? Fry's quest begins in southern Germany where he is granted unique access to Bayreuth's legendary annual Wagner festival. In Switzerland he discovers the origins of Wagner's masterpiece "The Ring." In Bavaria he marvels at the fairytale castle inspired by Wagner's...