Unreliable Memoirs by Clive James

Book club members agreed that Clive James has told an entertaining autobiographical yarn about growing up in Kogarah, a southern suburb of Sydney, in the 1940s and '50s. We found it a good read for this time of year when we were seeking something humorous to finish on a high note. How many of Clive's exploits were factual or embroidered beyond recognition was not something we spent much time on. It was enough for us that he had us chuckling from page to page.

The book focuses on Clive's childhood, adolescence, university, first jobs, national service and departure at 22 from Australia for England. An only child of a single parent (his father having tragically died at the end of the Second World War), Clive learnt the role of clown at a young age to distract from his shortcomings with his peers. He would go on to achieve widespread fame as an intellectual and entertainer. The book is an affectionate look at a slice of Australia's past after the War and at the mis-starts and wrong turns we all make, whatever our background, in the process of growing up, together with glimpses of the people who stood beside Clive, like his long-suffering mother.

That's not to say that we believed Clive's self-deprecating criticism of himself as being the worst, most insensitive, clumsiest, or most hopeless. His modesty is a little annoying at times since clearly the classical references sprinkled throughout the pages are meant to suggest to the reader an erudite intelligence. Some of us went so far as thinking him a bit of an intellectual snob at times.

It would also not do to examine some of the incidents described in the playgrounds and on the tough streets of 1950s Sydney too closely. A practical sex education session for a tribe of young boys with the girlfriend of a youth a couple of years older than them might not stand scrutiny as being a particularly funny topic today. And certainly bullying, however humorously described, might be considered a step too far.

Who was Clive James?

Clive James AO CBE FRSL was born Vivian Leopold James in 1939. (He was granted permission by his mother to change his name to Clive after Vivian Leigh became famous as an American actress.) He was an Australian critic, journalist, broadcaster, writer and poet who lived and worked in the United Kingdom from 1962 until his death last year.

After the events described in Unreliable Memoirs, he eventually graduated with a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in English from Sydney University in 1961 and worked on the Sydney Morning Herald as an assistant editor specialising in literary criticism.

In 1962 he moved to England and worked for The Observer as a television critic. He got a place at Cambridge, undertaking English studies and later a PhD on Percy Bysshe Shelley, attending the university at the same time as a number of other Australian notables including Germaine Greer and Robert Hughes. In his university life in Australia and England he was involved in theatrical entertainments and in writing for the student papers. He also became fluent in a number of languages, eventually translating Dante's Divine Comedy into English in 2013.

He began writing poetry, satire, and scripts for television. At one point he wrote popular songs, and worked in a circus. He later made his name as an entertainer known for his deadpan humour, presenting his own television programs. He published Unreliable Memoirs in 1980 followed by four other volumes of autobiography. These featured Australians such as film director, Bruce Beresford, who he flatted with for three years, and actor, Barry Humphries, disguised using made up names.

He was married to Prudence Shaw who he met at Cambridge and had two daughters. She divorced him after news emerged in 2004 of his eight year affair with model Leanne Edelstein.

Clive was showered with awards for his work over a 50 year period.

In 2011 he was diagnosed with leukaemia and other serious conditions but was still writing a column for The Guardian until 2017 under the title Reports of my Death ... He died in his home at Cambridge in November 2019.