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Top 10 Astonishing Facts about Clive James

Clive James, best known for being a Memoirist, was born in Australia on Saturday, October 7, 1939.

His other works include the 2007 non-fiction book, Cultural Amnesia, as well as the 1977 poetry collection, Fan-mail: Seven Verse Letters.

He was born Vivian Leopold James, but as a child chose the name Clive because he said, Vivian (no matter how spelt) would forever be a female name after Vivien Leigh鈥檚 star performance in Gone With the Wind.

He attended Sydney Technical College and Sydney University. After a year on the Sydney Morning Herald, he sailed to England in 1961, part of a generation of talented Australians 鈥� Germaine Greer, Robert Hughes and Barry Humphries among them 鈥� who were to enrich British culture in various ways.

After three years of what he described as 鈥渁 bohemian existence鈥� in London, he went up to Pembroke College, Cambridge, at the age of 26. He became president of the Footlights and started writing for literary magazines. For more astonishing facts about Clive James continue reading.

 

 

1.  Clive James Changed his Name

James was born in Kogarah, a suburb of Sydney, Australia. His mother, Minora (nee Darke), named her only child Vivian, after the male star of the 1938 Australian Davis cup team.

 鈥淎fter Vivien Leigh played Scarlett O鈥橦ara, the name became irrevocably a girl鈥檚 name no matter how you spelt it,鈥� he wrote, so his mother let him become Clive after a character in a Tyrone Power movie.

It could have been worse. There was, James noted in Unreliable Memoirs (1979), a famous Australian boy whose father named him after his campaigns across the Western Desert: he was called William Bardia Escarpment Qattara Depression Mersa Matruh El Alamein Benghazi Tripoli Harris.

2.  His father鈥檚 Death had a Deep impact on his Life

James’s father, Albert Arthur James, was taken prisoner by the Japanese during World War II.

Although he survived the prisoner-of-war camp, he died when the American B-24 carrying him and other freed allied POWs ran into the tail of a typhoon en route from Okinawa to Manila and crashed into the mountains of southeastern Taiwan.

 James would later state that his life’s works originated in his father’s death.

James, an only child, was brought up by his mother (Minora May, n茅e Darke), a factory worker, in the Sydney suburbs of Kogarah and Jannali, living some years with his English maternal grandfather.

3.  Clive James originated modern TV Criticism

 

James鈥� decision to go in front of the TV camera seemed like a surprising career move, but he swiftly became a popular success in series such as Cinema, The Late Clive James, Saturday Night Clive and Clive James on Television.

He also made documentaries that achieved high ratings on subjects such as the 麻豆APP fashions, Las Vegas, Japan and Formula One, and interviewed stars like Katharine Hepburn, Jane Fonda and Mel Gibson. He pioneered TV travel 鈥減ostcards鈥�, reporting from a dozen of the world鈥檚 great cities.

His strengths as a TV critic were his vast range of interests 鈥� 鈥渇rom ice-skating to Beethoven quartets鈥�, as he once put it 鈥� and the Kenneth Tynan-like exactness of his descriptions of performers.

鈥淭elevision brought James the riches and fame he craved,鈥� wrote one hostile critic. 鈥淏ut as far as his ambitions to have been an artist of merit are concerned, he squandered his talent, which is tragic.鈥�

4.   Clive James Possessed a High IQ

A bright child with an IQ of 140, James went to Sydney technical high school and studied psychology at the University of Sydney.

While there he was not only literary editor on the student paper, Honi Soit, and director of the student revue, but also took part in the Sydney Push, a libertarian, intellectual subculture that flourished in pub back rooms and whose associates included Germaine Greer and Robert Hughes.

After graduating, he served for a year as an assistant editor of the magazine page at the Sydney Morning Herald before sailing to London at the age of 22.

There, he shared a flat with the Australian film director Bruce Beresford. He became friends with Barry Humphries and worked as a sheet-metal worker, library assistant, photo archivist and market researcher.

5.  Clive James was a Versatile Poet

He was the author of several collections of poetry, including The River in the Sky (2018), Gate of Lilacs: A Verse Commentary on Proust (2016), Collected Poems 1958-2015, and the satirical verse epic Peregrine Prykke鈥檚 Pilgrimage Through the London Literary World: A Tragedy in Heroic Couplets (1974).

James鈥檚 assured, formal poems range in theme from romantic love to satire, and are composed in a wry voice reminiscent of Philip Larkin鈥檚. Reviewing Opal Sunset: Selected Poems 1958鈥�2008 and Angels over Elsinore: Collected Verse 2003鈥�2008, Village Voice critic Abigail Deutsch noted, 鈥淛ames鈥檚 artistry lies in his ability to seem both casual and careful: He observes an imperfect world with acerbic off-handedness, often setting his informal voice within the formal verse.鈥�

In 2015, he published a volume of poetry, Sentenced to Life, that expressed the loss and guilt he felt for his infidelity and betrayal of his wife and daughters. 

6.  Clive James was a Polyglot

James was able to read, with varying fluency, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian and Japanese. He was immensely learned, yet he detested literary theories and pomposity. He knew eight languages, including Russian, which he learned in order to read the poetry of Alexander Pushkin in the original.

In his article 鈥業nsult to the Language鈥�, James claims that Britain is the place where the language is 鈥榝alling apart fastest鈥� and that the 鈥榯ypical prose of the present has no past.鈥� He is also a polyglot, famously salting his works with references to the numerous European languages at his command.

He even learnt Japanese. Though such braggadocio, one imagines, has little purchase at the James breakfast table. His wife is a modern languages don, teaching Italian and boasting her own impressive backlist of publications and translations.

7.  He was a Novelist and Memoirist

In 1980 James published his first book of autobiography, Unreliable Memoirs, which recounted his early life in Australia and extended to over 100 reprintings.

It was followed by four other volumes of autobiography: Falling Towards England (1985), which covered his London years; May Week Was in June (1990), which dealt with his time at Cambridge; North Face of Soho (2006); and The Blaze of Obscurity (2009), concerning his subsequent career as a television presenter.

An omnibus edition of the first three volumes was published under the generic title of Always Unreliable. James also wrote four novels: Brilliant Creatures (1983); The Remake (1987); Brrm! Brrm! (1991), published in the United States as The Man from Japan; and The Silver Castle (1996).

In 1999, John Gross included an excerpt from Unreliable Memoirs in The New Oxford Book of English Prose. John Carey chose Unreliable Memoirs as one of the 50 most enjoyable books of the 20th century in his book Pure Pleasure (2000).

8.   He was a Polymath

 

A polymath is an individual whose knowledge spans a substantial number of subjects, known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems.

He was a critic, poet, social commentator, author and broadcaster, among other descriptors? He had established awe-inspiring reputations in so many fields that the only safe route is to begin at the beginning.

Clive James, who died at the age of 80, was one of his era’s great polymaths. (His near-contemporary Jonathan Miller, whose death was announced on the same day, was another.) He wrote poems and lyrics.

He was sharp in his literary criticism. 

9.     Clive James was Part of the Golden Australian Generation

Born Vivian Leopold James in Kogarah, he was part of a golden Australian generation at the University of Sydney. Along with Germaine Greer, Robert Hughes and Frank Moorhouse, James revelled in the left-wing intellectual subculture known as Sydney Push.

In those years, such Australians believed (rightly or wrongly) that life was elsewhere. Hughes, esteemed art critic, Greer, author and academic, and Barry Humphries, embryonic Dame Edna, joined James on a trek to what some then still called 鈥渢he mother country鈥�.

Early volumes of James鈥檚 memoirs, mention those compatriots under pseudonyms.  He describes a cold, unwelcoming island that in the 1960s, didn鈥檛 swing so vigorously as they had been led to believe.

Each nonetheless triumphed in his or her own way.

10.  Clive James Lived and Loved

 

He married to Prue Shaw, a Cambridge scholar, with whom he had two daughters: Claerwen and Lucinda.

James protected all three from media intrusion, though he gave an insight into his admiration for his wife when he produced her book on Dante for an interviewer: 鈥淭hat鈥檚 the real McCoy. That will always be there. The kind of stuff I do is more conjectural. I am still trying to impress her.鈥�

He betrayed his wife by having an eight-year affair with a former model, Leanne Edelsten. When Shaw discovered the affair, in 2012, she threw him out of their Cambridge home, and he moved to a London flat. 鈥淚 am a reprehensible character,鈥� he told one interviewer. 鈥淚 deserve everything that has happened to me.鈥�

However, their marriage survived a late estrangement when an Australian model revealed an eight-year affair.

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When taking a break from his impressive intellectual labours, James has an unexpected passion for dancing. His enthusiasm is for the tango, with the upstairs of his house converted into a ballroom. 

The polymath that he is, few would bet against him being as twinkle-toed on the dance floor as he is on the page.