James understands people, too — his piece defending Kingsley Amis against the charge of misogyny is wise, morally generous and critically acute. He even knows about motor cars. One of the best essays in this collection is, oddly enough, an extraordinarily well-informed and enlightening discussion of why Nikki Lauda was such a good driver.

And he makes good jokes. It was 2005, James tells us, before he managed to purchase the domain name www.clivejames.com from a cybersquatter.

Before the pirate got hold of it, my domain name belonged to another Clive James, a jet-ski instructor in Miami. I waited a long time for him to have his accident, but when I lunged forward to grab the vacant domain name it turned out the pirate had already bought it…

You’re already a clause past the joke before you catch it and yelp with laughter. That’s very, very slick. As that sentence indicates: there’s only one Clive James.

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