Beautiful and deeply meditative poems on illness, ageing, legacy and death from one of Australia’s finest writers.To be a long time dying is largely a phenomenon of modern medicine. The Light As It Grows Dark is reportage from this new country; hard-won revelations about the journey’s end: ‘This insane last phase/ When everything about you goes downhill.’A poet long before he was a journalist or broadcaster, Clive James was 70 when his health irret...

Step into the heart of Jamaica through the eyes of someone who lived its stories, traditions, struggles, and triumphs firsthand.The Fantasy: A True Jamaican Living is a powerful memoir by Clive James that captures the essence of growing up in Portland, Jamaica. From childhood adventures and family traditions to the rhythms of reggae and dancehall, the book paints a vivid picture of Jamaican culture and the values that shape its people. Through twenty-one engaging chapters, readers ...

"[A] collection of Clive James's essays on a variety of literary topics . . . This is sanity, humor and acuity in the face of death" ( The Wall Street Journal).In 2010, Clive James was diagnosed with terminal leukemia. Deciding that "if you don't know the exact moment when the lights will go out, you might as well read until they do," James moved his library to his Cambridge house, where he would "live, read, and perhaps even write." James is the award-win...

"A loving and breezy set of essays" on today's most addictive TV shows from "an incisive and hilarious critic" ( Slate).Television is not what it once was. Award-winning author and critic Clive James spent decades covering the medium, and witnessed a radical change in content, format, and programming, and in the very manner in which TV is watched.Here he examines this unique cultural revolution, providing a brilliant, eminently entertaining analysi...

Travel writing at its humorous best, Flying Visits collects the Postcards of Clive James originally written for the Observer between 1976 and 1983 – full of his distinctive wit and satire.Whether enduring Australian television, exploring the mystifying Soviet Union, watching sumo training in Japan, or enjoying Sondheim via serial killers in New York, James is never less than thoroughly entertaining.As a time-capsule of the period or as a h...

Kingsley Amis’s poetry tackles all the grimly humorous subjects he tackled in his novels—lust, lost love, booze, money and the lack of it, old age, death—and does so with immense formal poise. A master of both traditional and unconventional meters with a perfect ear for parody, Amis wrote satires, epigrams, and rueful and scornful songs that are remarkable not only for their virtuosity and humor but for their scabrous realism. It all adds up to a small, entirely individual, and memorably b...

The “technically and emotionally heart-stopping poems” (Spectator) of Clive James are collected in this decades-spanning volume.The poetry of Clive James has been delighting readers and winning awards for decades. His recent poems looking back over his extraordinarily rich life have brought him an even wider readership; some, such as “Japanese Maple” (first published in The New Yorker), became global news events upon their publication. In this fir...

**Following Visions Before Midnight, The Crystal Bucket is another hilarious time-capsule of 1970s television – the second collection of Clive James's ruthlessly funny, inimitable columns dissecting the entertainment of the day.'One of the few columnists who makes you laugh aloud' – Melvyn Bragg, Sunday Times**In many ways, the 1970s were a dark time for Britain – a time of struggle, deepening divisions and Christmas with the Osmonds. Cli...

**His third book of cultural criticism, From the Land of Shadows sees essayist, critic and poet Clive James at his erudite, enlightening best.'[T]he lasting impression is of our critic's truly amazing breadth of reference' – Times Literary Supplement**Collecting his work from the late 1970s and into the early 1980s, this book contains engaging, informed discussions of such writers as Bernard Levin, Gore Vidal, John le Carré, Anthony Burgess, Evelyn Waugh, ...

**The publication of Clive James's Sentenced to Life was a major literary event. Facing the end, James looked back over his life with a clear-eyed and unflinching honesty to produce his finest work: poems of extraordinary power that spoke to our most elemental emotions. Injury Time is its outstanding successor.'James's confrontation with his approaching death is nothing short of inspirational' – Joan Bakewell, Independent**With more time on the cl...

**Thoughtful and funny, this fifth collection of essays from much-loved critic and author Clive James covers the art, politics and culture of 1987–1992.'A well-balanced show of wit, intellect and glorious observation' – Sunday Times**With work on writers as diverse as Philip Larkin, Primo Levi and Stevie Smith, performers as iconic as Frank Sinatra and Billy Connolly, and publishing events as monumental as the World's First Official The Sun Neighbours Collection St...

A comedy of no manners, Brrm! Brrm! by Clive James is the satirical story of a high-flying Japanese businessman sent to London.'Brrm! Brrm! is funny, clever and sometimes as delicate and tender as the poetry of its hero, Akira Suzuki' – The TimesAkira Suzuki is in London for the first time. He ponders the litter and the unappealing food, while smiling politely at motorcycle jokes about his name. British humour, he...