The power of now: Night fighters and a glorious new beginning

I sat with Harry Carter on his front verandah, both of us watching the bushes, and the birds in the garden, and letting the sun beat down on our heads. He was 89 years old, had been an air force pilot in World War II, and wasn’t keen on talking to me at all. But …

The Idiot Revisited: The Tale of the Maison Trudon

I am terrible at buying birthday presents. I don’t know why, I just am. Especially for my wife. I just seem to get it wrong, year after year. So birthday shopping for me is a source of extreme anxiety. Blurred vision. Tingling fingertips. Shortness of breath. Diazepam. The whole lot. Some people feel this way …

Clive James: On journalism and poetry

All the time I feel the tension between composing poetry and writing incidental prose, but I feel it as a creative interchange, not as a conflict. When I took care to describe, in my Wimbledon reports, how Jimmy Connors deployed his Early Grunt along with a two-handed line drive and Bjorn Borg returned it along …