So Brightly at the Last: Clive James and the Passion for Poetry

Jimi Hendrix, Princess Diana and the Syrian dictator’s wife, Asma al-Assad, rub shoulders with Auden, Eliot and Shelley – and with the Trouser Thief Clive met while spending weeks locked up in a closed psychiatric ward – in this unconventional and affectionate biography.

In 2010, Clive was told he only had months to love. Since then he has shuttled between the hospital and the writing desk, pouring out a stream of books, articles and poems in a sustained burst of dazzling productivity.

The po...