Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

'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 Clive James's memoirs, we meet the young Clive, dressed in short trousers, and wrestling with the demands of school, various relatives and the occasional snake, in the suburbs of post-war Sydney. His adventures are hilarious, his recounting of them even more so, in this - the book that started it all . . . 'You can't put it down once started. Its addictive powers stun all normal, decent resistance within seconds. Not to be missed' Sunday Times 'All that really needs to be said to recommend Unreliable Memoirs is that James writes exactly as he talks, which is all his millions of fans could wish' Evening Standard

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Kirkus Book Review

A huge best seller in England,"" we're told--which must mean either that critic James (First Reactions, p. 956) is a media celebrity over there or that the un-prettified adolescent-memoir genre (raunchy, self-deprecating) is still something of a novelty to the English. In any case, US readers--no strangers to the masturbation/ acne/inferiority-complex routine--will still find some engaging quirks in these crisp, smartsy recollections of growing-up in Sydney, Australia. Born in 1939, James had an absent father (a POW) and then none at all (a plane crash when James was five). The result was ""an absurdly carefree upbringing"" by his nervous, poor mother: pre-teen James was a ""force of destruction""--wrecking the neighbors' flowers, knocking out street-lights, ineptly wearing a homemade mask-and-cape as junior gang-leader (""Only lack of opportunity saved us from outright delinquency""). Then, however, came puberty and more social activities: the Cubs, a mutual-masturbation phase (""I was queer as a coot""), agonies as a slow-developer in high school (""you can die of envy for cratered faces weeping with yellow pus""), panic over penis size (""In a class full of cock-watchers, I had to keep something between my shrinking twig and a hundred prying eyes""), success as the class clown, and the onset of heterosexual horniness. Fairly diverting material--but James self-indulgently provides more detail than most readers will want: e.g., on lapses in hygiene (""the snot supply,"" accidental bowel movements). And only the final chapters--about his gawky college awakening to literature and art (""I was not yet fully divested of the impression that E.M. Forster's principal creation had been Horatio Hornblower"")--are consistently fresh and funny. Intermittent amusement, then, as tedium and arch self-regard alternate with genuine insights and vividly-evoked youthful stumblings. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Vivian Leopold James was born on Oct. 7, 1939, in Kogarah, a suburb of Sydney, Australia. His father was taken prisoner by the Japanese at the beginning of World War II and died when the American transport plane carrying him back to Australia crashed into Manila Bay.He changed his first name to Clive after Vivian Leigh became famous for starring in Gone With the Wind.

After graduating from the University of Sydney and working briefly as an assistant editor on The Sydney Morning Herald, Mr. James set sail for London in 1962. The first volume of his autobiography, "Unreliable Memoirs", which was published in 1980 and rose to the top of the best-seller list in Britain, described his childhood in Australia. Its sequel, "Falling Towards England", covered, in often painful detail, his mostly unsuccessful attempts to gain traction in London, where he shared a flat with the future filmmaker Bruce Beresford.

Pembroke College, Cambridge, came to the rescue, offering him a place. Mr. James did manage to earn a degree and even embarked on a doctoral dissertation. Eric Idle, the future Monty Python star, welcomed him into Footlights, the student theatrical troupe; he became its president. He pressed his poems on every journal available and parlayed his enthusiasm for Hollywood. A scrambling career in literary journalism followed, recounted in "North Face of Soho".

His essays were first collected in "The Metropolitan Critic" (1974). Later collections included "At the Pillars of Hercules" (1977) and "From the Land of Shadows" (1982). His television criticism, issued in book form in "Visions Before Midnight" (1977), "The Crystal Bucket" (1981) and "Glued to the Box" (1983), was gathered in a single volume, "On Television," in 1991.

Clive Leopold James passed away on Sunday 12/01/2019 in Cambridge, England at the age of 80.