Scripts from Michael Palin's collection will now go on display

Unseen Monty Python sketches – including two scenes cut from the Holy Grail movie - are to go on display after being discovered in Michael Palin's archives.

The scripts reveal that despite being set in Arthurian times, the film was have included a scene set in the Wild West, In it, a man stumbles through the desert, in need of a refreshment, only to find a saloon he stumbles on is actually ‘the last bookshop before Mexico’.

Other abandoned storylines from the 1975 film include a camp Pink Knight’ who will not let Arthur cross a bridge without a kiss - ‘on the lips none of this sort of pecking the French try and get away with‘ - and Shakespeare’s Hamlet as foul-mouthed private detective, one of several sequences set in the modern day.

The scripts were discovered in the archive that Palin donated to the British Library last year.

More than 50 notebooks containing notes on two Pythons films - Holy Grail and Life Of Brian - will go on display there later this year, showing how much both films changed as they were being put together.

 The 75-year-old told The Times: ‘The Holy Grail took shape gradually and at the beginning it had far more ideas in it than ended up on screen because you had to have a narrative. In the end the story of the knights was strong enough.’

The Times reproduces some of the cut material today, and will print some of the Life Of Brian scripts tomorrow.

Published: 1 Aug 2018