British actor and notorious Twitter enthusiast Stephen Fry told fans who follow his musings on the micro-blogging site that he's taking a break from tweeting in order to write a book.

Fry said in a valediction on his website www.stephenfry.com that he intends to disconnect himself from his multimedia chatter on Twitter, blogs and websites to write a follow-up to his autobiography Moab Is My Washpot.

I must deliver a book to my publishers by the end of April or my soul and testicles will be forfeit, Fry wrote.

The 52-year-old actor -- well known as Melchett in the Blackadder TV comedy series with Rowan Atkinson and the gentleman's gentleman of Jeeves and Wooster -- said he knew some people would be relieved to hear he had stopped tweeting and others would despair of his absence.

But he said that he needed to be free of all distractions in order to write.

I need peace, absolute peace, an empty diary and zero distraction, he wrote. I enter a kind of writing purdah, an eremitical seclusion in which there is just me, a keyboard and abundant cups of coffee, all in a room whose curtains have been drawn against the light.

(Reporting by Paul Casciato, Editing by Steve Addison)

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