Unreliable Memoirs

A best-selling classic around the world, Clive James’s hilarious memoir has long been unavailable in the United States. Before James Frey famously fabricated his memoir, Clive James wrote a refreshingly candid book that made no claims to be accurate, precise, or entirely truthful, only to entertain. In an exercise of literary exorcism, James set out to put his childhood in Australia behind him by rendering it as part novel, part memoir. Now, nearly thirty years after it first came out in England, Unreliable Memoirs is again available to American readers and sure to attract a whole new generation that has, through his essays and poetry, come to love James’s inimitable voice.

Autobiography disguised as a novel - Story of childhood - Notes and names of real people have been changed.

From Fleet Street to the television, North Face of Soho is the fascinating and hilarious fourth volume of memoir from much-loved author, poet and broadcaster Clive James. '[James] delivers his gags with honed elegance' – Sunday Times It is 1968. Newly married, dressed in the style of the times ('a frenzy of bad judgement'), Clive James is leaving the cloistered world of Cambridge academia and setting his sights once again on the lights of literary London. Luckily for him and us, this crack at the big city would go rather better than last time. Still writing songs, directing sketch shows and trying to break into the movie business, with very mixed success, Clive eventually lands a weekly TV column at the Observer, finds his metier and rapidly becomes a household name. Credited with inventing a genre, Clive turns his attention to the previously critically disregarded medium of television to comment on the entire culture. Through the Seventies and early Eighties, from Fleet Street to Hollywood, from Russian department stores to Paris fashion shows, this is the hilarious, entertaining and honest story of a life lived to the full. North Face of Soho is the fourth book of memoir from Clive James. Continue his story with The Blaze of Obscurity.

A luminous memoir of post-war childhood, adventure and loss on the banks of the Nile. ‘Wonderful – a brave, inventive, touching distillation of memory and imagination’ JENNY UGLOW

Arriving in Cambridge on my first day as an undergraduate, I could see nothing except a cold white October mist. At the age of twenty-four I was a complete failure, with nothing to show for my life except a few poems nobody wanted to publish in book form.’ Falling Towards England – the second volume of Clive James’s Unreliable Memoirs – was meant to be the last. Thankfully, that's not the case. In ‘Unreliable Memoirs III’, May Week Was in June, Clive details his time at Cambridge, including film reviewing, writing poetry, falling in love (often), and marrying (once) during May Week – which was not only in June but also two weeks long . . . Continue Clive's story with even more of his memoirs: North Face of Soho and The Blaze of Obscurity.

When a frazzled New Yorker who is mad, bad and dangerous to know lands in Asia, life is never quite the same again - for anyone ... Fran Lebowitz cheerfully admits that she is intergalactically self-absorbed, a little crazy and really, really hard to please - just ask her eternally patient and bemused husband, Frank. But when her life in the fast land falls apart - again - it's time for a miracle. Reeling from the worst week of her life, topped off by her most important client stabbing her in the back, Fran realises that she's almost forgotten what her family looks like. She wants out of the rat race and her hectic life as a literary agent - and time to be herself, a real wife and mother to her two small children. Good old Frank delivers what seems the answer to her prayers - to escape for three months to Singapore while he does some business. But what starts out as a little break and a very big culture shock for all concerned marks the hilarious beginning of the end of the old Fran - and a whole new life.

Told with Clive James's unassailable sense of humour and self-effacing charm, Unreliable Memoirs is a hilarious and touching introduction to the story of a national treasure. A million-copy bestseller, this classic memoir is a celebration of life in all its unpredictable glory. With an introduction by political satirist and journalist P. J. O'Rourke. I was born in 1939. The other big event of that year was the outbreak of the Second World War, but for the moment that did not affect me. In the first instalment of James's memoirs we follow the young Clive on his journey from boyhood to the cusp of manhood, when his days of wearing short trousers are finally behind him. Battling with school, girls, various relatives and an overwhelming desire to be a superhero, Clive's adventures growing up in the suburbs of post-war Sydney are hair-raising, uproarious and almost too good to be true . . . 'Do not read this book in public. You will risk severe internal injuries from trying to suppress your laughter.' - Sunday Times.

Always Unreliable is the collected first three volumes of Clive James's eloquently witty autobiographies, Unreliable Memoirs, Falling Towards England and May Week Was in June. In Unreliable Memoirs we meet the young Clive James – dressed in shorts and growing up in post-war Sydney. With Falling Towards England, we find Clive living in a Swiss Cottage B&B, where he practises the Twist, anticipates poetical masterpieces he’s yet to compose, and worries about his wardrobe. Finally, May Week Was In June sees Clive at Cambridge University, where he enthusiastically involves himself in college life (generally female lives) until May Week – not only in June but also a fortnight long – when he gets married. The rest, of course, is history . . .