Client details
Clive James
Agent
| Robert Kirby |
About
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Clive James if the author of more than thirty books. As well as his three previous volumes of autobiography, UNRELIABLE MEMOIRS, FALLING TOWARDS ENGLAND, and MAY WEEK WAS IN JUNE, he has published collections of literary and television criticism, essays, travel writing, verse, and novels. As a television performer he has appeared regularly for both the BBC and ITV, most notably as writer and presenter of the Postcard series of travel documentaries. He helped to found the independent television production company Watchmaker and the Internet enterprise Welcome Stranger, one of whose offshoots is a multimedia personal website, www.clivejames.com. In 1992 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia and in 2003 he was awarded the Philip Hodgins memorial medal for literature. June 2009 saw the publication of THE REVOLT OF THE PENDULUM: Essays 2005-2008. For any journalism enquiries, please contact Carol MacArthur. | http://www.clivejames.com |
Gallery
Unreliable Memoirs 
The Blaze of Obscurity 
Falling Towards England 
The Revolt of the Pendulum 
Opal Sunset 
Cultural Amnesia 
Angels over Elsinore
Non-Fiction
| Publication Details | Notes |
|---|---|
| A POINT OF VIEW 2011 Picador | The BBC Radio 4 series A Point of View has been on the air since 2007. Over the years, it’s had a variety of presenters – including the national treasure that is Clive James – talking for ten minutes about anything and everything that has captured their imagination, piqued their interest, raised their blood pressure or just downright incensed them that week. Clive James was one of the favourite presenters, and now, for the first time, his original pieces – sixty in total – and all-new postscripts are collected together in one volume. Read along with Clive James as he reflects on everything from wheelie bins to plastic surgery, Elizabeth Hurley to the Olympics, 24 to Damien Hirst, Harry Potter to giving up smoking, car parks to Chinese elections, Britain’s Got Talent to the expenses scandal – and plenty more besides. Essentially a chronicle of life in twenty-first century Britain, A Point of View is informed and informative, thoughtful and thought-provoking – but above all, entertaining. In fact, in short, it’s a damn good read. |
| UNRELIABLE MEMOIRS 2010 The Folio Society | From causing havoc on building sites to hitting small girls with a wet handkerchief, from inopportune reactions in the swimming pool to obsessive longing for one girl after another, Clive James’s outspoken and delightful memoir of growing up in post-war Australia has won a place in the hearts of readers the world over. |
| THE BLAZE OF OBSCURITY: THE TV YEARS 2009 Picador | For many people, Clive James will always be a TV presenter first and foremost, and a writer second - this despite the fact that his adventures with the written word took place before, during and after his time on the small screen. Nevertheless, for those who remember clips of Japanese endurance gameshows and Egyptian soap operas, Clive reinventing the news or interviewing Hefner and Hepburn, Polanski and Pavarotti, Clive's 'Postcards' from Kenya, Shanghai and Dallas, or Clive James Racing Driver, Clive's rightful place does seem to be right there - on the box, in our homes, and almost one of the family. However you think of him, though, and whatever you remember him for, "The Blaze of Obscurity" is perhaps Clive's most brilliant book yet. Part Clive James on TV and part Clive James on TV, it tells the inside story of his years in television, shows Clive on top form both then and now, and proves - once and for all - that Clive has a way with words ...whatever the medium. |
| THE REVOLT OF THE PENDULUM 2009 Picador | Illuminating, insightful, informed, inspired, and intelligent, these are words that could - and do - apply equally to book or author; in fact, "The Revolt of the Pendulum", Clive James' latest essay collection, shows James at his most dazzling and versatile best yet. From the rules of grammar to the fundamentals of religion, from the culture of fandom to the cult of the critic, it's all there: his customary wit, learning and understanding; his precise way with words and pointed comments; his ear for language and eye for detail; and, his ability to focus on the finer points and the bigger picture simultaneously - not to mention the sheer scope of his subject matter. |
| CULTURAL AMNESIA: NOTES IN THE MARGIN OF MY TIME 2008 Picador | 'A gigantic book on a gigantic theme' - "Sunday Times". 'Aphoristic and acutely provocative: a crash course in civilization' - J. M. Coetzee. A lifetime in the making, "Cultural Amnesia" is the book Clive James has always wanted to write. Organized from A through to Z, and containing over 100 essays, it's the ultimate guide to the twentieth-century, illuminating the careers of many of its greatest thinkers, humanists, musicians, artists and philosophers. |
| FALLING TOWARDS ENGLAND : UNRELIABLE MEMOIRS II 2008 Pan | 'When we got off the ship in Southampton in that allegedly mild January of 1962 I had nothing to declare at customs except goose-pimples under my white nylon drip-dry shirt.' In the first volume of "Unreliable Memoirs", we said farewell to our hero as he set sail from Sydney Harbor, bound for London, fame and fortune. Finding the first of these proved relatively simple; the second two less so. |
Poetry
| Publication Details | Notes |
|---|---|
| OPAL SUNSET: SELECTED POEMS 1958-2008 2009 Picador | "Opal Sunset" gathers together fifty years of Clive James' poetry, and will undoubtedly enhance his reputation as one of the most versatile and accomplished of contemporary writers. Indeed - as with "Other Passports", "The Book of my Enemy" and "Angels Over Elsinore" before it - "Opal Sunset" proves Clive James to be as well suited to the intense demands of the poetic form as he is to prose. |
| ANGELS OVER ELSINORE: COLLECTED VERSE 2003-2008 2008 Picador | Well-known for his prose, as well as his TV appearances, Clive James has also established a name for himself in the world of poetry. |
Agent
| Maureen Vincent |
