Fun Interesting Facts about Clive James: Weekly Geeks #24
Just came across this Weekly Geeks thing courtesy of Melanie. Looks like fun, so here goes with #24:
1. Choose a writer you like.
2. Using resources such as Wikipedia, the author’s website, whatever you can find, make a list of interesting facts about the author.
3. Post your fun facts list in your blog, maybe with a photo of the writer, a collage of his or her books, whatever you want.
4. Come sign the Mr Linky below with the url to your fun facts post.
5. As you run into (or deliberately seek out) other Weekly Geeks’ lists, add links to your post for authors you like or authors you think your readers are interested in.
Interesting facts about the great Literary/Film/Culture/Arts critic, author, poet and media personality Clive James:
- Born Vivian James, he was allowed to change his name as a child because "after Vivien Leigh played Scarlett O’Hara the name became irrevocably a girl’s name no matter how you spelled it".[1] His father was taken prisoner by the Japanese during the Second World War and, although he survived the POW camp, he died when the plane returning him to Australia crashed, and was buried in Hong Kong
- In late 1961he moved to London where he shared a flat with the Australian film director Bruce Beresford . He read English Literature at Cambridge and started a PHd. on Shelley.
- He was a friend of Princess Diana’s and wrote a piece for The New Yorker entitled "I Wish I’d Never Met Her," recording his overbearing grief.
- He’s an atheist and sees religion as "advertising agencies for a product that doesn’t exist,"
- A notable Tango and Formula One enthusiast, he’s able to read, with varying fluency, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Latin, ancient Greek, Russian and Japanese.
- Cultural Amnesia is a superb book of more than 100 essays by James, which confront the culture and history of the 20th century by examining the lives of many who lived through it. Every time I pick up this book I take away penetrating thoughts to chew over, and sweet phrases to admire.
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November 24th, 2008 at 11:39 AM
My favorite bit of Clive James trivia is that, according to Lady Violet Powell in her memoir The Departure Platform, a young Clive James broke Cyril Connolly’s longstanding record for number of sausages eaten at the Powells’ home, the Chantry. I dont have the book in front of me, so I can’t consult it to determine whether Powell specified the winning quantity of sausages.