Clive james
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      • Introduction
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      • Pushkin's Deadly Gift
      • Great Sopranos of Our Time
      • A Memory Called Malouf
      • Bing Crosby's Hidden Art
      • Larkin Treads the Boards
      • The Iron Capital of Bruno Schulz
      • Criticism a la Frank Kermode
      • Fast Talking Dames
      • Rough Guides to Shakespeare
      • General Election Sequence 2001
      • Primo Levi and the Painted Veil
      • A Big Boutique of Australian Essays
      • Cyrano on the Scaffold
      • A Nightclub in Bali
      • Aldous Huxley Then and Now
      • A Man Called Peter Porter
      • Philip Roth's Alternative America
      • The Miraculous Vineyard of Australian Poetry
      • Save Us From Celebrity
    • The Revolt of the Pendulum >
      • The Question of Karl Kraus
      • John Bayley's Daily Bread
      • Kingsley and the Women
      • Canetti Man of Mystery
      • Camille Paglia Burns for Poetry
      • The Guidebook Detectives
      • Zuckerman Uncorked
      • The Flight from the Destroyer
      • Saying Famous Things
      • Insult to the Language
      • The Perfectly Bad Sentence
      • Happiness Writes White
      • All Stalkers Kill
      • Best Eaten Cold
      • White Shorts of Leni Reifenstahl
      • Made in Britain, More or Less
      • Movie Criticism in America
      • Show Me the Horror
      • The Measure of A.D. Hope
      • Robert Hughes Remembers
      • Modern Australian Painting
      • On Diamond Jim McClelland
      • The Voice of John Anderson
      • Niki Lauda Wins Going Slowly
      • Damon Hill's Bravest Day
      • Jonathan James-Moore
      • Ian Adam
      • Pat Kavanagh
      • Starting with Sludge
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      • Russell Davies
      • Bryan Appleyard
      • Marina Hyde
      • Bruce Beresford
      • Michael Frayn
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        • The Emperor's Last Words
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        • To Peter Porter: a letter to Sydney
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Talking in the Library - Series Three

Jonathan Miller

Jonathan Miller started something with Beyond the Fringe but was content to let the next generation try to finish it, although few of them had his gift for penetratingly intelligent humour. He went on to host arts televison programmes and become the most sought-after director of opera in the world. But it was increasingly evident from his several big television series on science that his deeper interests lay in the brain itself, the source of all creativity. Talking in the library, Miller attempts to redirect the attention of an arts-bound plodder towards the true centre of the action. Typically, Miller is so lyrical about the adventure of science that his explanations bring us back to art by another route.

Terry Gilliam

Terry Gilliam went on from Monty Python to become one of the most original film directors Hollywood has known: sometimes too original for the comfort of the studio bosses. With a piece of paper and a pencil he can create a personal world for four pence. On film he needs millions of dollars, but he spends it to rare effect. Those who believe, as I do, that Brazil is a political film ranking with the achievements of Costa-Gavras and Gillo Pontecorvo, will welcome the rare opportunity to see and hear Gilliam expressing himself outside the usual restrictions of the talk show. His torrential inventiveness is as evident as his boundless humour.

Jung Chang

Jung Chang ranks with Alexander Solzhenitsyn as the author of a great book that dispelled the last illusions about a great tyranny. Wild Swans matches The Gulag Archipelago for its power and horror, with the difference that the personality of its narrator seems so frail. But the frailty is an illusion. She is a tough-minded woman, as the ghost of Mao Zedong is about to find out, because after nine years she is just finishing his biography. In this programme, she looks back on her nightmarish childhood and forward to a transformed China.

Howard Jacobson

​​Howard Jacobson is one of the most fearless commentators of our time. Shocking and subversively funny, he has a permanently fresh knack for breaking taboos like stale biscuits. In his novels and newspaper columns he is famous for his provocative eloquence, but the surprise is that he talks that way in real life, with an unmatched capacity to put a complex point of view in a string of elegantly formed declarative sentences. Talking in the library, he faces the hard questions about what it means to be Jewish in a purportedly multicultural Britain and in a world put out of joint by the turmoil in the Middle East.

Ahdaf Soueif ​

Ahdaf Soueif has written two of the most important novels to have come out of Egypt in recent times: The Map of Love and In the Eye of the Sun. Her first concern is the position of Egypt in relation to Britain, the old colonialist power. She has lived the relationship in her own person, as an exile and as a representative of women's liberation in the Islamic world. Her further concern is with the position of Islam in a world context. Clive James does his best to convince us that her charm and beauty are irrelevant to the argument.

Sir Jeremy Isaacs

Sir Jeremy Isaacs rapidly established himself as the most creative television executive of our time when he green-lighted such revolutionary programmes as Rock Follies and The Naked Civil Servant. He personally launched Channel 4 and shaped its early course. His World at War series set the standards for a genre. As director of the Royal Opera House he got into a war of his own, which he characteristically allowed the television cameras to observe. He is possibly the last example of a type that changed Britain: the cultural grandee. Talking in the library, Isaacs effortlessly proves that charm and enthusiasm have always been two of his most potent weapons.

Copyright © 2019
​Built & managed  By Dawn Mancer
  • Home
    • Archive
  • Author
    • Profiles >
      • The Texture of Reality
  • Books
    • The Fire Of Joy
    • Unreliable Memoirs
    • Falling Towards England
    • May Week Was In June
    • North Face of Soho
    • The Blaze of Obscurity
    • Latest Readings
    • Cultural Amnesia
    • Play All
    • A Point Of View
    • Flying Visits
  • Essays
    • Visions Before Midnight
    • The Crystal Bucket
    • Glued To The Box
    • The Metropolitan Critic
    • At the Pillars of Hercules
    • As of This Writing
    • The Meaning of Recognition >
      • Introduction
      • Polanski and the Pianist
      • Fantasy in the West Wing
      • Pushkin's Deadly Gift
      • Great Sopranos of Our Time
      • A Memory Called Malouf
      • Bing Crosby's Hidden Art
      • Larkin Treads the Boards
      • The Iron Capital of Bruno Schulz
      • Criticism a la Frank Kermode
      • Fast Talking Dames
      • Rough Guides to Shakespeare
      • General Election Sequence 2001
      • Primo Levi and the Painted Veil
      • A Big Boutique of Australian Essays
      • Cyrano on the Scaffold
      • A Nightclub in Bali
      • Aldous Huxley Then and Now
      • A Man Called Peter Porter
      • Philip Roth's Alternative America
      • The Miraculous Vineyard of Australian Poetry
      • Save Us From Celebrity
    • The Revolt of the Pendulum >
      • The Question of Karl Kraus
      • John Bayley's Daily Bread
      • Kingsley and the Women
      • Canetti Man of Mystery
      • Camille Paglia Burns for Poetry
      • The Guidebook Detectives
      • Zuckerman Uncorked
      • The Flight from the Destroyer
      • Saying Famous Things
      • Insult to the Language
      • The Perfectly Bad Sentence
      • Happiness Writes White
      • All Stalkers Kill
      • Best Eaten Cold
      • White Shorts of Leni Reifenstahl
      • Made in Britain, More or Less
      • Movie Criticism in America
      • Show Me the Horror
      • The Measure of A.D. Hope
      • Robert Hughes Remembers
      • Modern Australian Painting
      • On Diamond Jim McClelland
      • The Voice of John Anderson
      • Niki Lauda Wins Going Slowly
      • Damon Hill's Bravest Day
      • Jonathan James-Moore
      • Ian Adam
      • Pat Kavanagh
      • Starting with Sludge
    • Guest Writers >
      • Zoe Williams
      • Russell Davies
      • Bryan Appleyard
      • Marina Hyde
      • Bruce Beresford
      • Michael Frayn
  • Poetry
    • Poetry Collections >
      • Fin de Fiesta
      • Injury Time
      • Sentenced to Life >
        • Japanese Maple
        • Sentenced to Life
        • Procedure for Disposal
        • Leçons des ténèbres
        • Driftwood Houses
        • Event Horizon
        • Neuland
        • Echo Point
        • Change of Domicile
        • Holding Court
        • Too Much Light
        • Nature Programme
        • My Latest Fever
        • Nina Kogan's Geometrical Heaven
        • The Emperor's Last Words
        • Winter Plums
      • Nefertiti in the Flak Tower >
        • Whitman and the Moth
        • The Falcon Growing Old
      • Angels over Elsinore
      • The Book of My Enemy >
        • Recent Verse
        • Verse Letters
      • Opal Sunset
      • Other Passports >
        • Recent Verse >
          • The Book of My Enemy has been Remaindered
        • Parodies etc.
        • Earlier Verse
        • Verse Diaries
      • Fan Mail >
        • To Russell Davies: a letter from Cardiff
        • To Martin Amis: a letter from Indianapolis
        • To Pete Atkin: a letter from Paris
        • To Prue Shaw: a letter from Cambridge
        • To Tom Stoppard: a letter from London
        • To Peter Porter: a letter to Sydney
    • Epic Poems >
      • The River in the Sky
      • Gate of Lilacs
      • The Divine Comedy >
        • Hell - Cantos 1-3
        • Purgatory - Cantos 1-3
        • Heaven - Cantos 1-3
      • Poem of the Year
    • Books About Poetry >
      • Somewhere Becoming Rain
      • Poetry Notebook >
        • Listening for the Flavour
        • Five Favourite Poetry Books
        • Velvet Shackles
        • Meeting MacNiece
        • The Donaghy Negotiation
    • Poetry Readings
    • Articles on Poetry
    • Back from The Web
    • Guest Poets >
      • Daniel Brown
      • Liane Strauss
      • Les Murray
      • Peter Porter
      • Alan Jenkins
      • Stephen Edgar
      • John Stammers
      • Simon Barraclough
      • Isobel Dixon
      • Christian Wiman
      • Olivia Cole
      • Judith Beveridge
      • Peter Goldsworthy
      • Kapka Kassabova
  • Lyrics
    • My life in lyrics
    • Selected Song Lyrics >
      • Dancing Master
      • Faded Mansion
      • Have You got a Biro I can Borrow?
      • I Have to Learn to Live Alone Again
      • Hill of Little Shoes
      • History & Geography
      • I See the Joker
      • Laughing Boy
      • My Brother's Keeper
      • National Steel
      • Nothing Left to Say
      • Sessionman's Blues
      • Song for Rita
      • Stranger in Town
      • Sunlight Gate
      • The Egoist
      • The Eye of the Universe
      • The Ice Cream Man
      • Femme Fatale
      • The Master of the Revels
      • Thirty-year Man
      • Winter Spring
  • Video
    • Talking in the Library >
      • Series One
      • Series Two
      • Series Three
      • Series Four
      • Series Five
    • Postcards
    • CJ on YouTube
  • Radio
    • A Point Of View
    • Book Talk