James, Clive

(Australian, 1939– )

Clive James first made his name as a critic, but is now best known to a wide public as the presenter of several long-running television shows. His early years are the subject of Unreliable Memoirs (1980), an hilarious account of growing up plump and bookish in the Australia of the 1950s. His adolescence is the subject of Falling Towards England (1985), while May Week Was in June (1990), an account of his arrival at Oxford, makes up the third volume of a comic trilogy. His first wholly fictional novel was Brilliant Creatures (1983), the tale of a young executive making his way through the glamorous world of literary and media London. Like his television shows, James's books satirize the fashions and pretensions of the day through a cleverly constructed ‘fish-out-of-water’ character.

Evelyn Waugh, Leslie Thomas, Howard Jacobson  WB