Ian Shircore 
So Brightly at the Last 
Clive James and the Passion for Poetry

Jimi Hendrix, Princess Diana and the Syrian dictator’s wife, Asma al-Assad, rub shoulders with Auden, Eliot and Shelley – and with the Trouser Thief Clive met while spending weeks locked up in a closed psychiatric ward – in this unconventional and affectionate biography.In 2010, Clive was told he only had months to love. Since then he has shuttled between the hospital and the writing desk, pouring out a stream of books, articles and poems in a sustained burst of dazzling productivity.The poems he’s written in these last years show an impressive range and depth – sometimes light, witty and paradoxical, sometimes sad, heartfelt and regretful. All are packed with the unexpected ideas, inventive imagery and uniquely thrilling way with words that have helped him achieve his avowed ambition of becoming ‘a fairly major minor poet.’