Ian Sansom

His own worst critic? Clive James the poet

The most memorable criticism of James’s poetry was written by James himself

issue 01 February 2020

Clive James (1939-2019), in the much-quoted words of a New Yorker profile, was a brilliant bunch of guys. One of those guys was a poet. Alongside the celebrated columns in the Observer, and Saturday Night Clive, and the Postcard From… documentaries, and Clive James on Television, and so on and so forth, there was a lifetime’s outpouring of verse.

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