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North Face of Soho

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North Face of Soho

By: Clive James
Narrated by: Clive James
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About this listen

Read by the author, Clive James.

From Fleet Street to the television, North Face of Soho is the fascinating and hilarious fourth volume of memoir from much-loved author, poet and broadcaster Clive James.

'[James] delivers his gags with honed elegance' – Sunday Times


It is 1968. Newly married, dressed in the style of the times ('a frenzy of bad judgement'), Clive James is leaving the cloistered world of Cambridge academia and setting his sights once again on the lights of literary London.

Luckily for him and us, this crack at the big city would go rather better than last time.

Still writing songs, directing sketch shows and trying to break into the movie business, with very mixed success, Clive eventually lands a weekly TV column at the Observer, finds his metier and rapidly becomes a household name. Credited with inventing a genre, Clive turns his attention to the previously critically disregarded medium of television to comment on the entire culture. Through the Seventies and early Eighties, from Fleet Street to Hollywood, from Russian department stores to Paris fashion shows, this is the hilarious, entertaining and honest story of a life lived to the full.

North Face of Soho is the fourth book of memoir from Clive James. Continue his story with The Blaze of Obscurity.

Art & Literature Authors Entertainment & Celebrities Entertainment & Performing Arts Film & TV History & Criticism Journalists, Editors & Publishers Funny Witty

Critic reviews

His proses mixes together cleverness and clownishness, and achieves a fluency and a level of wit that makes his pages truly shimmer.
It’s not just that he writes a lot, but that he writes with intense perfectionism, and delivers his gags with honed elegance
I feel I know more about the author after reading it than I gleaned from all of his other books put together. This is a book about hard-earned self-knowledge. What makes it funny is quite how hard the self-knowledge was to earn (William Leith)
All stars
Most relevant

If you could sum up North Face of Soho in three words, what would they be?

Funny, interesting and educational.

What was one of the most memorable moments of North Face of Soho?

His editorial exploits in London.

What does Clive James bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you had only read the book?

His own voice used, tell it how he meant it to sound.

If you made a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

Bold, Brave and Humble

Any additional comments?

Great Read.

Always witty

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Clive James tells brilliant stories about his rise to fame. I realised by the end of the book how much I miss his voice and humour. A great tonic in these serious times!

Laugh out loud - brilliant!

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Now the Clive James is no more, it is in tribute to him that I'm collecting his generous works, and I've never been disappointed.
His life is so full of anecdote and real things wrapped up as anecdote that makes him on of the great descriptive writer's of our times.
For Bless you Mr James.

Another great book from Clive James

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Witty, clever, interesting, enlightening, moving, and amusing. What more can you ask for in a memoir?

Classic Clive James; he could make a walk around the block to get a paper, a packet of fags, and a pint of milk into a best seller.

er, um, well, great

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The 4th book of his loose autobiographical Unreliable series is Clive James at his best. As adulthood dawns he goes through the many areas of his post University career from newspaper columnist to playwright onto author and eventually starting as a television presenter. His style of writing is genuinely funny & his reading suits it totally. The only frustration is that the more I learn about the many faces of Clive James the less I seem to know about him. Highly recommended and thoroughly enjoyed.

Enjoyed it thoroughly

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