Product Description

*Clive James' sharp, brilliant and outrageously funny memoirs together in one volume* In UNRELIABLE MEMOIRS we meet a very young Clive James. One dressed in shorts. His hilarious adventures growing up in post-war Sydney are deliciously recounted in this, the first volume of his memoirs. Next our hero sets sail for London where he hopes to find Success without compromising his Ideals. FALLING TOWARDS ENGLAND tells how, having happily failed to land a suitable job, Clive moves into a little bed and breakfast in Swiss Cottage where he thoughtfully practises the Twist, anticipates the poetical masterpieces yet to be composed, and worries a little about his wardrobe. MAY WEEK WAS IN JUNE sees Clive at Cambridge University, where he enthusiastically involves himself in a wide variety of pursuits (so long as they aren't on the syllabus and happen to be female). Then during May week - not only in June but also two weeks long - he marries...and the rest is history.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #150371 in Books
• Published on: 2001-12-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 560 pages

About the Author
Clive James is the author of more than twenty books. As well as three volumes of autobiography he has published severals novels, also collections of literary criticism, television criticism, verse and travel writing. His most recent collections of essays are RELIABLE ESSAYS: THE BEST OF CLIVE JAMES and EVEN AS WE SPEAK: NEW ESSAYS. As a television performer he has appeared regularly for both the BBC and ITV. He lives in London.

Customer Reviews

Completely unreliable
Your perception of Clive James may be of him as a man who preceded Angus Deayton as the witty and erudite host of a range of travelogues and TV shows. If that is the extent of your knowledge of him, you're denying yourself a great pleasure.

This is not to say that his is a life worth knowing about. It isn't even his own life that you are presented with in Always Unreliable. It is, at best, a close proximation of the life he wishes to live. James frequently alludes to a dislocated sense and of wishing he were freer to choose his own course within that which he had chosen. He's written about an idealised version of the path he took.

These memoirs, though, are riddled with intelligence, eloquence, wit and a fine eye for the absurdities of the immigrant wanderer in a country which the displaced Australian finds strangely underdeveloped.

There is a strong sense of hurt and broken dreams in this - never more so when James is moved to describe the dreadful flooding in his beloved Florence. He does, in fact, spend a considerable length of time mourning: for his treatment of his mother, for her loss of her husband and James' father, for the few women in his life.

These volumes need time but you will frequently spot the turn of phrase for which James became famous. If your experience of reading these memoirs does not endear you to this singular man, you will surely grasp that here is one of the great Australian writers in rare form - self deprecation really suits him - and you will wish to read more of his startling, literary intellect.

highly recommended
The first of these three volumes was included in the fifty most 'purely enjoyable' reads of the last century chosen by literary critic John Carey. On the basis of this I bought a copy of 'Always Unreliable' at the airport to read on the beach last year. I'm so glad I did; this book genuinely made my week in the sun very special and I more than agreed with Prof Carey's assessment. This is a wonderful book on many levels and something of a surprise to someone who's previous experience of Clive James was his TV shows. As you might expect its sharp and witty and in places hysterically funny, but its also very moving, very clever, amd very well written. Treat yourself.

Witty and stimulating
I bought about three of Clive James's books of essay collections about six months ago. I didn't read any one volume from cover to cover but picked out a number of articles/essays that looked interesting. Some had been written for publications such as the New Yorker and others for the Independent and various other publications.

Clive James combines stimulating intellectual analysis with witty remarks on e.g. politicians. There were essays on Aldous Huxley and Primo Levi, for example, that encouraged me to order some of their works from Amazon. There was a wonderful and moving essay on a dying Australian poet (I'm afraid that I've forgotten his name). I have read most of Orwell's readily available works but Clive James seems to have got hold of some which I hadn't previously read and I enjoyed his review of Orwell. In one volume that I read there was coverage of an election and I found his remarks about Tony Blair extraordinarily funny.

Highly recommended.