Dr Kate Egan is Senior Lecturer in Film and Media at Northumbria University Professor Jeffrey Weinstock is Professor of English at Central Michigan University

Fifty years on, And Now For Something Completely Different provides a timely retrospective on the troupe’s transformation from absurdist cult TV to global comedy lingua franca. Egan and Weinstock’s clutch of new scholarly perspectives effectively historicises Python in popular culture. As Pythonology goes, this is pretty much the full Monty.

• List of illustrationsAcknowledgementsNotes on contributorsKate Egan and Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, ‘It’s… The Introduction’PART I: SITUATING PYTHON1. Rick Hudson, ‘Six Comics in Search of a …: Monty Python and Absurdist/Surrealist Theatre’2. Gina Wisker, ‘"‘None shall pass" and "The skull beneath the skin": Monty Python, the British Class System, and Death’3. Anna Martonfi, ‘Der Ver Zwei Peanuts: Depictions of a Distant War in Monty Python’s Flying Circus’ PART II: PYTHON’S PRACTICES, FORMS AND MEDIUMS4. James Leggott, ‘The Royal Philharmonic Goes to the Bathroom: The Music of Monty Python’ 5. Paul Wells, ‘The Disruptive Metamorphoses of an Impish God: Gilliam's Satiric Animation’6. Ewan Wilson, ‘Figures Traced in Shite: The Scribe, The Illuminator, and Monty Python’s Holy Grail’ PART III: CONTEXTS AND REPRESENTATIONS7. Caroline Langhorst, ‘Grannies from Hell, Daring Bicycle Repairmen, Upper-Class Twits and "Make Tea Not Love": Monty Python’s Flying Circus and 1960s British (Popular) Culture’ 8. Brett Mills, ‘The Parrot, the Albatross, and the Cat: Animals and Comedy in Monty Python’ 9. Kathleen J. Cassity, ‘"Political Correctness", Reversal, and Incongruity: Dynamics of Humour in Life of Brian’PART IV: CULT, FANDOM AND PYTHON10. Ernest Mathijs, ‘Philosophy, Absurdity, Waste and The Meaning of Life – A Cult Film, Of Sorts’11. Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, ‘In Praise of Silliness: The Cult of Python’ 12. Kate Egan, ‘Memories of Connecting: Fathers, Daughters and Intergenerational Monty Python Fandom’