This memoir series offers a blend of humor and poignancy, chronicling the extraordinary life of Clive James, a renowned author, poet, and broadcaster. Spanning three volumes, it captures his unique experiences and reflections, showcasing his wit and insight. The critically-acclaimed series has resonated with readers, selling over a million copies, and provides a compelling narrative of personal and professional triumphs and challenges.
A soaring autobiographical poem, meditating on death and celebrating life,
from one of our most cherished, critically acclaimed and bestselling writers.
Renowned critic, bestselling author and award-winning poet Clive James offers
an exploration and celebration of one of his favourite writers, Philip Larkin.
Containing more than 100 original essays organized by quotations, James illuminates, rescues, or occasionally destroys the careers of many of the greatest thinkers, humanists, musicians, artists, and philosophers of the 20th century. 110 photographs.
Introduced by Julian Barnes, Reliable Essays is the definitive choice of Clive James's essays, selected from thirty years of prose. Including classic pieces such as Postcard from Rome, and his observations on Margaret Thatcher, it contains funny examinations of characters like Barry Humphries, while elsewhere showcasing James's more reflective and analytical style.
A collection of essays, both illuminating and humourous, by Clive James. He focuses on Australian poetry, television, the rise and fall of various icons, the holocaust, the state of culture in the 1990s, and the death of Diana.
Accompanying Clive James's BBC Television series, this book traces how the invention and development of mass communications - press, radio, film and television - has transformed the nature of fame, and how the famous have dealt with that fame.
Paperback edition of a collection of the Australian-born author and critic's travel writing published in the London 'Observer' during the period 1976 to 1983. Countries and cities which receive the witty and satiric James treatment include Sydney, New York, Rome, Paris, Jerusalem, Russia and Japan. First published by Jonathan Cape in 1984.
'These literary-critical essays are compact with wit and penetration but also have a kind of freshness about them, as if the author has never got over his first rapture of enjoyment at the sheer thisness of poetry and prose. James is in the tradition of Hazlitt, Bagehot, and Desmond MacCarthy, with a gusto worthy to succeed theirs and a philosophy well set out in his own introduction. "Literature", he writes, "says most things itself, when it is allowed to." Criticism like this expands that allowance and adds to its pleasure' John Bayley, Observer 'His outstanding talent is as a cicerone, guiding the ignorant traveller with patience, knowledge and wit round some favourite literary edifice and communicating his own admiration of it to the goggling and fascinated visitor ...the lasting impression is of our critic's truly amazing breadth of reference' Times Literary Supplement 'Mr James is hungry for and not unworthy of engagement with important issues. A collection of dignity and coherence ...tellingly timely' Sunday Times
A collection of the Australian-born writer's TV criticism published in the London Observer during the period between 1979 and 1982. This is a paperback edition of a volume first published by Jonathan Cape in 1983. Clive James' earlier volumes of TV criticism include Visions Before Midnight (1977 & 1981) and The Crystal Bucket (1983). They have been published in a single volume with a new introduction and index as Clive James on Television (1991).
