If I might borrow from football punditry, this was definitely a book of two halves. The early chapters detailing Clive James's time as an undergraduate at Cambridge during the 1960s are very entertaining. James had secured a place at Pembroke College to read English Literature and went up in about 1965. Having already secured a degree back home in Australia he was able to study for the Tripos in just two years, and he set about making sure that he enjoyed every moment of his time in Cambridge. His recollections of his time in the Footlights are highly amusing and include detailed insights into figures later famous in their own right such as Eric Idle (subsequently a mainstay of Monty Python's Flying Circus) and 'Romaine Rand' (a notably transparent avatar for James fellow Australian, Germaine Greer).

James tells his tale with a pleasing lack of modesty, though he never subsides into rank bragging either. He certainly managed to keep an impressive number of plate spinning on different poles during his time as an undergraduate (working for the Footlights, writing poetry, reviewing films, reading Proust, slowly, in French and even briefly editing Granta were just a few of the stings to his bow), though these activities naturally threatened to impinge upon his academic responsibilities. He cartainly makes Cambridge in the mid-1960s sound a beguiling place.

The second part of the book, though, seems slightly dislocated and I found myself struggling to find the will to continue. It seemed to me as if he was including accounts of adventures (or perhaps misadventures) that befell him because he thinks that they could or should be funny, but lacked the physical or spiritual energy to apply the final gloss to make them so.

The positive certainly more than outweighed the negative but he did rather sell me the dummy with this one. ( )

This may have fewer laugh-out-loud moments than its predecessors but it describes the period when he encountered many of the people who have since shaped our national cultural landscape and it does so with Clive's distinctive panache and erudite wit. Like the man himself, there is a brash shyness here: we are given parts of stories but the presentation is so stylish taht it is hard to see through to the core. ( )

James, Clive, 1939-/Authors, Australian > 20th century >/Biography/Cambridge (England) > Social life and customs/Australians > England > Cambridge