With his lightning-quick wit, unbridled creativity and his ear for the absurd, Spike Milligan revolutionized British comedy, leaving a legacy of influence that stretches from Monty Python's Flying Circus to the work of self-confessed acolytes such as Eddie Izzard and Stephen Fry today.
Throughout his life Milligan wrote prolifically: scripts, poetry and fiction, as well as several volumes of memoir, in which he took a somewhat flexible approach to the truth. At last, in this single, gloriously...