Snakecharmers in Texas

“The only unifying principle I would claim for these articles is that they are written out of real interest in their subjects. If the reader asks how I dare presume to take lyric poetry and ice-dancing with seemingly equal seriousness, I have no short answer, beyond pointing out that homo faber and homo ludens are both members of the same species sapiens, and that Mozart played billiards…”

This latest collection of essays brings the celebrated Jamesian wit to bear on a dazzlingly diverse assembly of personalities, places and burning issues of the eighties. He tells of such wonders of the world as the Statue of Liberty and the Sydney Opera House, and visits the Nuremburg stadium littered with crushed Fanta cans where the master race once assembled shoulder to brown-shirted shoulder. He reports on the Royal progress through the Californian heartland of Ron and Nancy’s USA and the invasion of Normandy by an ageing army of D-Day veterans out on an anniversary spree. He profiles Barry Manilow in “a detergent-blue suit with diamanté trim” and Philip Larkin “wearing his Library Association tie” alongside the seductive Lady Diana Cooper and the searing Bob Geldof and in company with the frost-borne footwork of Torvill and Dean.

Whatever the topic, wherever the territory, SNAKECHARMERS IN TEXAS displays to vivid effect that inimitable blend of the wicked turn of phrase, stylish irreverence and sheer plain-speaking that remains the hallmark of the ever more adroit Clive James.