Michael Palin isn’t a ‘national treasure’

It’s a well-known fact that Michael Palin is a ‘national treasure’. Or so you are told just about every single time the travel presenter and writer appears on television or features in a newspaper interview. So it was with grim inevitably that a few days before the first instalment of his latest expedition, Michael Palin: Into Iraq, aired on Channel 5 on Tuesday, the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Times both felt it imperative to describe him with this phrase.

Never mind that he’s no doubt utterly sick of this lazy cliché – objectively, it’s a misleading misnomer. ‘National treasure’ is patronising, twee and demeaning, and distracts from the fact that he’s one of the finest writers of our time, whose elegant and erudite prose is known for its rich, mellifluous, accessible yet uncluttered style. He hasn’t become a bestselling author six times over for nothing. He just writes so well, and writes as someone who has spent a lifetime reading books.