Clive James Books In Order

Novels

  1. Brilliant Creatures (1983)
  2. The Remake (1987)
  3. Brrm! Brrm! (1991)
  4. The Silver Castle (1996)

Collections

  1. Britannia Bright’s Bewilderment In The Wilderness Of Westminster (1976)

Non fiction

  1. The Metropolitan Critic (1974)
  2. Visions Before Midnight (1977)
  3. The Crystal Bucket (1979)
  4. At the Pillars of Hercules (1979)
  5. Unreliable Memoirs (1981)
  6. From the Land of Shadows (1982)
  7. Glued to the Box (1982)
  8. Flying Visits (1984)
  9. Falling Towards England (1985)
  10. Snake Charmers in Texas (1988)
  11. May Week Was in June (1990)
  12. Clive James On Television (1991)
  13. Dreaming Swimmer (1992)
  14. Fame in the 20th Century (1993)
  15. Even As We Speak (2001)
  16. The Meaning of Recognition (2004)
  17. North Face of Soho (2006)
  18. Cultural Amnesia (2007)
  19. Reliable Essays (2009)
  20. The Revolt of the Pendulum (2009)
  21. The Blaze of Obscurity (2009)
  22. A Point of View (2011)
  23. Always Unreliable (2012)
  24. Cultural Cohesion (2013)
  25. The Complete Unreliable Memoirs (2013)
  26. Poetry Notebook (2014)
  27. Latest Readings (2015)
  28. Play All (2016)
  29. Injury Time (2017)
  30. Somewhere Becoming Rain (2019)

Novels Book Covers

Collections Book Covers

Non fiction Book Covers

Clive James Books Overview

Brrm! Brrm!

A prospective Japanese high flyer called Akira Suzuki came to London for a little international polish. He pondered the litter and the unappealing food, he smiled politely at predictable motor cycle jokes about his name Brrm! Brrm!, and thought, so this is the famous British sense of humour.

At the Pillars of Hercules

First published in 1979, this collection focuses on the literature and politics of the 1970s. Clive James’s discussions range from the legacy of Auden and Larkin, to Gore Vidal and Lord Longford. Topics include poetry, aestheticism and history.

Unreliable Memoirs

A best selling classic around the world, Clive James’s hilarious memoir has long been unavailable in the United States. Before James Frey famously fabricated his memoir, Clive James wrote a refreshingly candid book that made no claims to be accurate, precise, or entirely truthful, only to entertain. In an exercise of literary exorcism, James set out to put his childhood in Australia behind him by rendering it as part novel, part memoir. Now, nearly thirty years after it first came out in England, Unreliable Memoirs is again available to American readers and sure to attract a whole new generation that has, through his essays and poetry, come to love James s inimitable voice.

Flying Visits

‘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. Undaunted, Clive moved into a bed and breakfast in a Swiss Cottage where he practiced the Twist, anticipated poetical masterpieces and worried about his wardrobe. ‘A comic triumph, full of terrific jokes and brilliantly sustained set pieces’ Ian Hamilton, ‘London Review of Books’. ‘It is something to do not merely with talent but with energy, chutzpah, appetite. Mr James has total mastery of his medium’ Anthony Burgess, ‘Observer’.

Falling Towards England

‘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. Undaunted, Clive moved into a bed and breakfast in a Swiss Cottage where he practiced the Twist, anticipated poetical masterpieces and worried about his wardrobe. ‘A comic triumph, full of terrific jokes and brilliantly sustained set pieces’ Ian Hamilton, ‘London Review of Books’. ‘It is something to do not merely with talent but with energy, chutzpah, appetite. Mr James has total mastery of his medium’ Anthony Burgess, ‘Observer’.

May Week Was in June

‘Arriving in Cambridge on my first day as an undergraduate, I could see nothing except a cold white October mist. At the age of twenty four I was a complete failure, with nothing to show for my life except a few poems nobody wanted to publish in book form.’ Falling Towards England the second volume of Clive James’s ‘Unreliable Memoirs’ was meant to be the last. Thankfully, that’s not the case. In ‘Unreliable Memoirs III’, Clive details his time at Cambridge, including film reviewing, writing poetry, falling in love often, and marrying once during May Week which was not only in June but also two weeks long…
‘Nobody writes like Clive James; he has invented a style’ Spectator ‘He turns phrases, mixes together cleverness and clownishness, and achieves a fluency and a level of wit that make his pages truly shimmer…
May Week Was in June is vintage James’ Financial Times

Clive James On Television

This volume incorporates three collections: ‘Visions Before Midnight’, ‘The Crystal Bucket’ and ‘Glued to the Box’. they are selections of Clive James’s TV criticism from ‘The Observer’ between 1972 and 1982, from the 1972 Olympics to the 1982 Eurovision Song Contest.

Fame in the 20th Century

As an accompaniment to an upcoming PBS television series, this volume examines the nature of fame in the twentieth century, commenting on the notoriety of such figures as Madonna, Charles Lindbergh, and Walt Disney. TV tie in.

Even As We Speak

Effervescent, energetic and eclectic. this is one of the late Twentieth Century’s finest minds and bellies on show. Even As We Speak is an illuminating and hilarious collection of essays by one o’ Picador’s most beloved authors. He focusses on Australian poetry on television today: on the rise and fall of various icons: on the question of the culpability of the ordinary German in the holocaust; and there is a compellingly provocative and much talked about piece on the death of Diana. James has the largest backlist of any Picador author and his sales have been well over a million.

The Meaning of Recognition

Literary critic, cultural commentator, TV personality, journalist, poet, political analyst, satirist and Formula One fan: Clive James is a man and master of many talents, and the essays collected here are testament to that fact. Whether discussing Bing Crosby, Bruno Schulz or Shakespeare, he manages to prioritize style and substance simultaneously, his tone never less than pitch perfect, his argument always considered. With each phrase carefully crafted and each piece offering cause for thought, the resulting volumewhich takes the reader from London to Bali, theatre to library, from pre election campaigning to sitting in front of the TV at home, watching The Sopranos and The West Wingis remarkable not only for its range and insight, but also its intimacy and honesty. A contemporary everyman, James is also unmistakably himself, and The Meaning of Recognition shows him at his witty, learnedand heartfeltbest.

North Face of Soho

After ‘Unreliable Memoirs’, ‘Falling Towards England’ and ‘May Week Was in June’ comes the next instalment in the ongoing saga that is Clive James’s life. His fourth and eagerly awaited volume of autobiography promises to be every bit as eventful, entertaining, engrossing and honest as the previous three. At the very end of ‘May Week Was in June’, we left our hero sitting beside the River Cam one beautiful 1968 spring day, jotting down his thoughts in a journal. Newly married and about to leave the cloistered world of Cambridge academia for the racier, glossier life promised by Literary London, he was, so he informed his journal, reasonably satisfied. With his criticism beginning to appear in magazines and newspapers such as the ‘New Statesman’, and his poetry published in Carcanet, as well as a play then being performed to rave reviews at the Arts Theatre, James had good reason to be content. But what happened next? This is the question posed, and answered by, North Face of Soho. Intelligent, amusing and provocative the words apply to the man himself as much as his memoirs it’s a book that can’t come soon enough for the legions of Clive James fans worldwide. ‘His proses mixes together cleverness and clownishness, and achieves a fluency and a level of wit that makes his pages truly shimmer.’ ‘Financial Times.’

Cultural Amnesia

‘In the forty years it took me to write this book, I only gradually realized that the finished work, if it were going to be true to the pattern of my experience, would have no pattern…
The book I wanted to write had its origins in the books I was reading. Several times, in my early days, I had to sell my best books to buy food, so I never underlined anything. When conditions improved I became less fastidious. Not long after I began marking passages for future consideration, I also began keeping notes in the margin beside the markings, and then longer notes on the end papers…
As the time for assembling my reflections approached, I resolved that a premature synthesis was the thing to be avoided. So this is a book about how not to reach one. If I have done my job properly, themes will emerge from the apparent randomness and make this work intelligible. But it will undoubtedly be a turbulent read, and if this book were not difficult, it would not be true.’ 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. From Louis Armstrong to Ludwig Wittgenstein, via Walter Benjamin, Sigmund Freud, Franz Kafka and Marcel Proust, it’s a book for our times and, indeed, for all time.

Reliable Essays

Introduced by Julian Barnes, Reliable Essays is the definitive selection of Clive Jamess outstanding essays, chosen from thirty years of spellbinding prose. Including such classic pieces as his Postcard From Rome and his memorable observations on Margaret Thatcher, it also contains brilliantly funny examinations of characters like Barry Humphries, while elsewhere showcasing Jamess more reflective and analytical side. From Germaine Greer to Marilyn Monroe, from the nature of celebrity to German culpability for the Holocaust, Reliable Essays is an unmissable cultural index of the twentieth century.

The Blaze of Obscurity

‘Clive James on TV’ is now in book form. 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 work 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’, 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.

A Point of View

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. Of all the presenters, Clive James was a clear favourite, 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 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, Clive James s 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.

Always Unreliable

All three volume of Clive James’s sharp and funny autiobiography where first we meet the young Clive James dressed in shorts and growing up in post war Sydney. With ‘Falling Towards England’, we find Clive living in a Swiss Cottage B&B, where he practises the Twist, anticipates poetical masterpieces he’s yet to compose, and worries about his wardrobe. Finally ‘May Week was in June’ sees Clive at Cambridge University, where he enthusiastically involves himself in college life generally female lives until May week not only in June but also a fortnight long when he gets married. The rest is history, or awaiting a fourth volume of memoirs.

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