Clive James

Clive James ranged across criticism, memoir, poetry, fiction and broadcasting with a voice built on close reading and comic observation. Unreliable Memoirs, the first of five autobiographical volumes, recalls his Australian childhood and education before his move to Britain. Sentenced to Life collects poems written from 2011 to 2014, when illness sharpened his attention to memory, regret and the visible world. Picador issued the collection in 2015. James also translated Dante, wrote long essays on literature and popular culture, and became familiar to television audiences as a critic and presenter. Unreliable Memoirs expands experience through anecdote, whereas Sentenced to Life compresses it into late poems.