Accompanying a new BBC series, legendary comic and national treasure Billy Connolly returns to his roots, reflecting on his life, his homeland and what it means – then and now – to be Scottish.
All roads lead back home.
Billy Connolly may be a citizen of the world, but in his heart he’s never been far from his homeland. Coming Home is Billy’s unique and intimate portrait of his native Scotland, a love letter to the places and people that made him.
It’s an adventure inspired by a single incident: the moment Billy received his Knighthood and was asked ‘How does it feel to have achieved all this when you came from nothing?’ His response was, ‘But I did come from something!’ So begins an odyssey through the Highlands, Lowlands and the Barrowlands on a shaggy dog quest to find out what that ‘something’ was and whether it is still there.
Far from a typical travelogue, Billy’s quest is as much through his memories and experiences as it is through his excursions, with a series of key artefacts prompting reminiscences – a first pressing of a Hank Williams album (the first record he ever owned), Landseer’s Monarch of the Glen, a bottle of air that recreates the smell of the old Glasgow Docks – each of which inspire moments of reflection, joy, drama and laughter.
Accompanying a major BBC TV series, Coming Home is Billy Connolly’s insightful, moving and very funny account of the stuff that really matters. Family, love, sex, health, football, fishing, work, art, swearing, banjos, friends, going to the pub. And good tea.
Reading age: Adult
RRP: Paperback NZ$40.00
Published by Penguin Random House New Zealand.
