Clive James

Alasdair Gray gives us a vivid new Paradiso

28 November 2020 9:00 am

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

7 December 2019 9:00 am

‘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

30 April 2016 9:00 am

The ‘journey’ — at least the one played out in public — begins with an announcement that you are incurable.…

Frost was an effective interviewer because he was never combative — hence the famous admission of failure that he extracted from Nixon in 1974 (above) and from Blair in 2003

David Frost’s tablet in Poet’s Corner should have read: ‘To the Unknown Television Presenter’

29 October 2015 9:00 am

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

18 April 2015 9:00 am

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’

4 October 2014 9:00 am

Clive James on poetry, civilisation and the critical benefits of facing leukaemia