North Face of Soho

In the closing pages of the last volume, I got married. The ceremony marked a rare outbreak of normality in my life. It was symbolized by my personal appearance. I was clean-shaven and had a hairstyle in reasonably close touch with my head. After Unreliable Memoirs, Falling Towards England and May Week Was In June comes the fourth instalment in Clive James’s life. Taking us from Fleet Street to Clive James on TV, from Russian department stores to Paris fashion shows – via fatherhood, some killer bees, and a satire starring Anne Robinson as Mrs Thatcher – North Face of Soho is the larger-than-life story of a life lived to the full.Continue Clive's story with the last of his memoirs The Blaze of Obscurity.

‘It’s not just that he writes a lot, but that he writes with intense perfectionism, and delivers his gags with honed elegance’ Sunday Times, ‘I feel I know more about the author after reading it than I gleaned from all of his other books put together. This is a book about hard-earned self-knowledge. What makes it funny is quite how hard the self-knowledge was to earn’ William Leith, Evening Standard

Clive James was the multi-million-copy bestselling author of more than forty books. As well as his memoirs, he has published essays, literary and television criticism, travel writing, verse and novels. As a television performer he has appeared regularly for both the BBC and ITV, most notably as writer and presenter of the Postcard series of travel documentaries. His poetry collection Sentenced to Life and his translation of Dante's The Divine Comedy were both Sunday Times top ten bestsellers, and his collections of verse were shortlisted for many prizes. In 2012 he was appointed CBE and in 2013 an Officer of the Order of Australia. He died in 2019.