Customer Reviews
Witty and stimulating - By: PhilosopherKing, 26 Nov 2008 
I bought about three of Clive James's books of essay collections about six months ago. I didn't read any one volume from cover to cover but picked out a number of articles/essays that looked interesting. Some had been written for publications such as the New Yorker & others for the Independent & various other publications.
Clive James combines stimulating intellectual analysis with witty remarks on e.g. politicians. There were essays on Aldous Huxley & Primo Levi, for example, that encouraged me to order some of their works from Amazon. There was a wonderful & moving essay on a dying Australian poet (I'm afraid that I've forgotten his name). I have read most of Orwell's readily available works but Clive James seems to have got hold of some which I hadn't previously read & I enjoyed his review of Orwell. In one volume that I read there was coverage of an election & I found his remarks about Tony Blair extraordinarily funny.
Highly recommended.
HUGELY entertaining - By: chris widgery, 18 Aug 2008 I didn't grow up with Clive James. I was vaguely aware of him from the telly, but nothing more than that. And his life has not been that exciting - childhoodin Australia before moving to England. Not, on the face of it, much cause for me to read this book (a collection of his assorted volumes of "unreliable memoirs")
But these memories are wonderful, & the telling even more so. Funny, touching, heartfelt and, more than anything, hugely readable & entertaining. Not a demanding book, but a very enjoyable one. Really, really good; highly recommended.
The First Garry Bushell - By: Fred Bookie, 01 Apr 2008 
Clive James was thein the 70s & 80s the best Television punditin the world.
He was followed by Nina Myskow & then eclipsed bt Garry Bushell.
But this is still a great read & a fitting tribute. As is Bushell Off THe Box by Garry Johnson a fantastic tribute to Mr Bushell.
Clive James is a legend & should be back on TV.
highly recommended - By: Dr. B. Heath, 19 Oct 2005 The first of these three volumes was includedin the fifty most 'purely enjoyable' reads of the last century chosen by literary critic John Carey. On the basis of this I bought a copy of 'Always Unreliable' at the airport to read on the beach last year. I'm so glad I did; this book genuinely made my weekin the sun very special & I more than agreed with Prof Carey's assessment. This is a wonderful book on many levels & something of a surprise to someone who's previous experience of Clive James was his TV shows. As you might expect its sharp & witty &in places hysterically funny, but its also very moving, very clever, amd very well written. Treat yourself.
Completely unreliable - By: L. Richardson, 31 Dec 2004 Your perception of Clive James may be of him as a man who preceded Angus Deayton as the witty & erudite host of a range of travelogues & TV shows. If that is the extent of your knowledge of him, you're denying yourself a great pleasure.
This is not to say that his is a life worth knowing about. It isn't even his own life that you are presented within Always Unreliable. It is, at best, a close proximation of the life he wishes to live. James frequently alludes to a dislocated sense & of wishing he were freer to choose his own course within that which he had chosen. He's written about an idealised version of the path he took.
These memoirs, though, are riddled with intelligence, eloquence, wit & a fine eye for the absurdities of the immigrant wandererin a country which the displaced Australian finds strangely underdeveloped.
There is a strong sense of hurt & broken dreamsin this - never more so when James is moved to describe the dreadful floodingin his beloved Florence. He does,in fact, spend a considerable length of time mourning: for his treatment of his mother, for her loss of her husband & James' father, for the few womenin his life.
These volumes need time but you will frequently spot the turn of phrase for which James became famous. If your experience of reading these memoirs does not endear you to this singular man, you will surely grasp that here is one of the great Australian writersin rare form - self deprecation really suits him - & you will wish to read more of his startling, literary intellect.
