Clive James

More than one hundred essays organized by quotations from A-Z discuss some of the great thinkers, artists, humanists, and philosophers of the twentieth century.

Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

Cultural Amnesia

Autobiography disguised as a novel - Story of childhood - Notes and names of real people have been changed.

Unreliable Memoirs

Dante Alighieri

Presents a translation of Dante's allegorical poem.

The Divine Comedy

The author reflects on his latest readings, and re-readings, undertaken after being diagnosed with terminal leukemia, combining thoughts on old favorites and new discoveries with personal musings on living and dying.

Latest Readings

Clive James is one of our finest critics and best-loved cultural voices. He is also a prize-winning poet. Since he was first enthralled by the mysterious power of poetry, he has been a dedicated student. In fact, for Clive, poetry has been nothing less than the occupation of a lifetime, and in this book he presents a distillation of all he's learned about the art form that matters to him most. With his customary wit, delightfully lucid prose style and wide-ranging knowledge, Clive explains the difference between the innocuous stuff that often passes for poetry today and a real poem: the latter being a work of unity that insists on being heard entire and threatens never to leave the memory. A committed formalist and an astute commentator, Clive offers close and careful readings of individual poems and poets (from Shakespeare to Larkin, Keats to Pound), and in some case second readings or re-readings late in life - just to be sure he wasn't wrong the first time! Whether discussing technical details of metaphorical creativity or simply praising his five favourite collections of all time, he is never less than captivating. Filled with insight and written with an honest, infectious enthusiasm, Poetry Notebook is the product of over fifty years of writing, reading, translating and thinking about poetry.

2006-2014

Poetry Notebook

Television and TV viewing are not what they once were--and that's a good thing, according to award-winning author and critic Clive James. Since serving as television columnist for the London Observer from 1972 to 1982, James has witnessed a radical change in content, format, and programming, and in the very manner in which TV is watched. Here he examines this unique cultural revolution, providing a brilliant, eminently entertaining analysis of many of the medium's most notable twenty-first-century accomplishments and their not always subtle impact on modern society--including such acclaimed serial dramas as Breaking Bad, The West Wing, Mad Men, and The Sopranos, as well as the comedy 30 Rock. With intelligence and wit, James explores a television landscape expanded by cable and broadband and profoundly altered by the advent of Netflix, Amazon, and other "cord-cutting" platforms that have helped to usher in a golden age of unabashed binge-watching.

a bingewatcher's notebook

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Collected Writings on Philip Larkin

Somewhere Becoming Rain

‘The brilliant creatures of the title live in a world of lost innocence and vast incomes; publishers, writers, media men and consultants, they belong to a charmed circle where everyone knows everybody else’s business and thinks it the most important thing in life. It’s all marvellously clever; Clive James doesn’t miss a trick. It’s funny too. Enjoy, enjoy’ The Times ‘Foaming with ideas and afterthoughts and after-afterthoughts, Clive James’s first novel is a joy to read. He is nearer to Wodehouse than to Waugh. He is not setting out merely to raise laughs. He takes vigorous swipes at most of the unacceptable faces of society, and, as with all good satirists, there is venom in the indignation’ Listener ‘I thought I was going to hate Brilliant Creatures, the first novel by Clive James. But before long I found myself greatly enjoying this romping satire of London literary life. The chief pleasure of Brilliant Creatures lies in the writing, which sizzles off the page with a rare merriment’ Illustrated London News ‘James is up on a tightrope of style, wobbling away, relentlessly funny. James’s achievement, beyond the fizz and the jokes, is to have created characters who begin t be likeable, and who make and live with a decision worth pondering’ London Review of Books

Brilliant Creatures

From the Land of Shadows

Falling Towards England

The Essential Essays

Cultural Cohesion

In this new collection of "technically and emotionally heart-stopping poems" (Spectator)—including "Japanese Maple," which was published in The New Yorker to great acclaim—Clive James looks back over an extraordinarily rich life with a clear-eyed and unflinching honesty. There are regrets but no trace of self-pity in these verses, which—for all their grappling with death and his current illness—are primarily a celebration of what is treasurable and memorable in our time here. Again and again, James reminds us that he is not only a poet of effortless wit and lyric accomplishment but also an immensely wise one, who delights in using poetic form to bring a razor-sharp focus to his thought. Miraculously, these poems see James writing with his insight and energy not only undiminished but positively charged by his situation. The poems of Sentenced to Life represents a career high point from one of the greatest literary intellects of our age.

Poems

Sentenced to Life

Including his most memorable pieces – his ‘Postcard from Rome’, his observations on Margaret Thatcher, his insights into Heaney, Larkin and Orwell – this book also contains brilliantly funny examinations of characters like Barry Humphries, as well as showcasing James’s more thoughtful, analytical side. From Germaine Greer to Marilyn Monroe, from the nature of celebrity to German culpability for the Holocaust, Reliable Essays is an unmissable collection from one of the best writers of our time. ‘He has widened the “tonal range” of criticism, permitting it to be both sober and skittish, learned and lewd, rhetorically rambunctious and epigrammatically concise . . . an intellectual as well as a joker, a wise man as well as a wit’ Peter Conrad, Observer ‘His writing is impeccably witty, flexible and urbane . . . immensely enjoyable to read. It’s a pleasure to see the metropolitan critic back in action’ Christopher Taylor, Sunday Telegraph ‘He can both get to the heart of a subject and raise a laugh’ Nicholas Lezard, Sunday Times

The Best of Clive James

Reliable Essays

*Clive James' sharp, brilliant and outrageously funny memoirs together in one volume* In UNRELIABLE MEMOIRS we meet a very young Clive James. One dressed in shorts. His hilarious adventures growing up in post-war Sydney are deliciously recounted in this, the first volume of his memoirs. Next our hero sets sail for London where he hopes to find Success without compromising his Ideals. FALLING TOWARDS ENGLAND tells how, having happily failed to land a suitable job, Clive moves into a little bed and breakfast in Swiss Cottage where he thoughtfully practises the Twist, anticipates the poetical masterpieces yet to be composed, and worries a little about his wardrobe. MAY WEEK WAS IN JUNE sees Clive at Cambridge University, where he enthusiastically involves himself in a wide variety of pursuits (so long as they aren't on the syllabus and happen to be female). Then during May week - not only in June but also two weeks long - he marries... and the rest is history.

The Memoirs

Always Unreliable

Essentially, this is Clive James' desert island poems: a selection of his favourite verse and a personal commentary on each.The Fire of Joy was the final book Clive James completed before his death in 2019. It takes its title from the French expression Feu de Joie, which refers to a military celebration when all the riflemen of a regiment fire one shot after another in a wave of continuous sound: it is a reminder that the regiment's collective power relies on the individual, and vice versa. In this book, James has chosen a succession of English poems, exploding in sequence from Chaucer to the present day; they tell the story of someone writing something wonderful, and someone else coming along, reading it, and feeling impelled to write something even more wonderful. After a lifetime, these are the poems James found so good that he remembered them despite himself. In offering them to you, the main purpose of this book is to provide ammunition that will satisfy your urge to discover, learn and declaim verse. As well as his selection of poems, James offers a commentary on each: whether this is a biographical, historical or critical introduction to the poem, or a more personal anecdote about the role a particular poem has played in James's life, these mini essays provide the joy of James's enthusiasm and the benefit of his knowledge. Full of the flashing fires of poems you will not be able to forget, this book will ignite your passion and leave you with a contagious crackle rattling in your ears.

Roughly 80 Poems to Get by Heart and Say Aloud

The Fire of Joy

In the last book he completed before he died, Clive James offers a personal guide to the poems he found it impossible to forget.

‘His contribution to the art and enjoyment of TV criticism over the past ten years has been immense. His work is deeply perceptive, often outrageously funny and always compulsively readable’ Said the judges of the British Press Awards, in naming Clive James Critic of the Year for 1981. The Crystal Bucket offers a further selection of his inimitable TV criticism for the Observer. ‘C.J. didn’t get where he is today just by being funny. He is humane, liberal and compassionate . . . What he writes is always pertinent and always witty . . We own him a deep debt of gratitude’ Gavin Ewart, Listener ‘Few critics have a more unerring ear for woolliness and doubletalk or a more scathing and entertaining way of dealing with it’ Lesley Garner, Good Housekeeping ‘He is one of the most remarkable figures in British cultural life at the moment: a poet and gifted literary critic who is also genuinely liked by the mass audience’ Michael Mason, London Review of Books ‘One of the few columnists who make you laugh aloud . . . if there were angels he would be on their side: and that would certainly include Charlie’s Angels’ Melvyn Bragg, Sunday Times

Clive James

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