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CLIVE JAMES |
| Clive James was born in Sydney, Australia in 1939. He was educated at Sydney Technical High School & Sydney University where he was literary editor of the student newspaper Honi Soit & also directed the annual Union Revue. |
| After a year spent as Assistant Editor of the magazine page of the Sydney Morning Herald he sailed in late 1961 for England. Three years of would-be bohemian existence in London were succeeded by his entry into Cambridge University, where he read for a further degree while contributing to all the undergraduate periodicals & rising to the Presidency of Footlights. |
| His prominence in extracurricular activities having attracted the attention of the London literary editors, the by-line "Clive James" was soon appearing in The Listener, The New Statesman, The Review & several other periodicals, all of them keen to tap into the erudite verve which had been showing up so unexpectedly in Varsity & the Cambridge Review. Yet the article that made his name was unsigned. |
| At the invitation of Ian Hamilton, who as well as editing The Review was Assistant Editor of The Times Literary Supplement (which was still holding at the time to it's traditional policy of strict anonymity), the new man in town was given several pages of the paper for a long, valedictory article about Edmund Wilson. Called "The Metropolitan Critic" in honour of it's subject, the piece aroused wide-spread speculation as to it's authorship: Graham Greene was only one of the many subscribers who wrote to the editor asking for their congratulations to be passed on & it became a point of honour in the literary world to know the masked man's real identity. |
| Embarrassed to find himself graced with the same title he had given his exemplar, Clive rapidly established himself as one of the most influential metropolitan critics of his generation but he continued to act on his belief that a cultural commentator could only benefit from being as involved as possible with his subject & over as wide a range as opportunity allowed. |
| The Sunday newspaper The Observer hired Clive as a television reviewer in 1972 & for ten years his weekly column was one of the most famous regular features in Fleet Street journalism, setting a style which was later widely copied. (Selections from the column were published in three books - Vision Before Midnight, The Crystal Bucket, Glued to the Box & finally in a compendium, On Television). During this period he gradually became a prominent television performer himself & over the next two decades he wrote & presented countless studio series & specials, as well as pioneering the "Postcard" format of travel programmes, which are still in syndication all over the world. |
| Clive's major series Fame in the Twentieth Century was broadcast in Britain by the BBC, in Australia by the ABC & in the United States by the PBS network. But despite the temptations & distractions of media celebrity, he always maintained his literary activity as a critic, author, poet & lyricist. In 1974, his satirical verse epic Peregrine Prykke's Pilgrimage was the talk of literary London, many of whose leading figures were disconcerted by appearing in it & more disconcerted if they were left out. |
| In the same year, The Metropolitan Critic was merely the first of what would eventually be seven separate collections of his articles & in 1979 his first book & autobiography, Unreliable Memoirs recounting his upbringing in Australia, was an enormous publishing success, which has now extended to more than sixty reprintings. It was followed by two other volumes of his autobiography, Falling Towards England & May Week Was in June & by an omnibus edition of all three volumes under the generic title of Always Unreliable. |
| In addition there have been four novels (the first, Brilliant Creatures, was a best-seller), several books of poetry (a complete edition called The Book of My Enemy, was published in Britain in 2003) & a collection of travel writings, Flying Visits. |
| Clive's literary journalism first became familiar in the United States through Commentary, the New York Review of Books, the New Yorker & later through the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times & the Atlantic Monthly. His recent outlets for literary journalism in Britain have included the TLS, the LRB, The Guardian, The Spectator & The Liberal whilst in Australia the Australian Book Review & The Monthly. His fourth novel, The Silver Castle was the first book about Bollywood which was published in the United States in 1996. |
| Collaborating with the singer & musician Pete Atkin, Clive wrote the lyrics for six commercially released albums in the early 70s & the partnership resumed with three more albums after the turn of the millennium, culminating with a hit appearance of their two-man song-show on the Edinburgh Fringe in 2001 & tours of Britain in 2002, 2005 & 2006. There was a tour of Australia & Hong Kong in early 2004. |
| After helping to found the successful independent television production company Watchmaker, Clive James retired from mainstream television to become chairman of the internet enterprise Welcome Stranger. After the launch of that organisation - its magazine, In London is now published both in Britain & Australia. Clive subsequently stepped down from the chairmanship to head one of it's subsidiaries, the world's first personal multimedia web site of its type. Building the web site is now among the chief interests of his post-television years but he continues to be active in several literary fields. |
| Clive's later collections of essays include Reliable Essays & Even as We Speak. The very latest, The Meaning of Recognition, was published in Picador in late 2005. Clive is currently completing a long study of cultural discontinuity in the 20th Century for an American publication of Cultural Amnesia & has also completed the fourth volume of his memoirs, under the title North Face of Soho. |
| In 1992, Clive was made a member of the Order of Australia in 1999 an honorary Doctor of Letters of Sydney University & in 2003 he received Australia's premier award for poetry, the Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal. In 2006 he was made an Honorary Doctor of Letters by the University of East Anglia & elected as an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. In 2003 he was awarded the George Orwell Special Prize for a lifetime achievement in journalism & broadcasting. |
| Clive is married to the scholar Prue Shaw & they have two daughters, Claerwen, molecular biologist turned painter & Lucinda, civil servant & world expert on CSI: Miami. |
For more information on Clive James, Contact Arena. Tel: 0113-239-2222 |