Clive James
Alasdair Gray gives us a vivid new Paradiso
As every Italian schoolchild knows, The Divine Comedy opens in a supernatural dark wood just before sunrise on Good Friday…
Remembering the genius of Clive James
‘Clive James Stirs.’ That was the standard subject line for the emails I used to get from the great Australian…
The race from the Big C to the Big D
The ‘journey’ — at least the one played out in public — begins with an announcement that you are incurable.…
David Frost’s tablet in Poet’s Corner should have read: ‘To the Unknown Television Presenter’
On 13 March 2014 a congregation of 2,000 people, including many of the great and the good, gathered in Westminster…
The theory wars have ended in stalemate
State-of-criticism overviews and assessments almost always strike a bleak note —the critical mind naturally angles towards pessimism — so it…
Clive James on his late flowering: ‘I am in the slightly embarrassing position where I write poems saying I’m about to die and then don’t’
Clive James on poetry, civilisation and the critical benefits of facing leukaemia
