Clive James: one of Australia's great literary exports dead, aged 80

One of our greatest literary exports, Clive James, novelist, essayist, TV pioneer, has died after a long battle with ill health.

Clive James at his home in London. Picture: File

One of Australia’s greatest literary exports, Clive James, has died, aged 80.

James was surrounded by his family and his books when he died at his Cambridge home four days ago. A  private funeral was held in the Chapel at Pembroke College, Cambridge, on Wednesday, after which his agent released a statement about his death on behalf of the family.

James had been battling terminal blood cancer since 2010 and had often joked how he was embarrassed at being alive so long after he was supposed to have died.

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In 2014, he published a poem, Japanese Maple, in which he wrote: "when the maple tree in my garden turned to flame in autumn, that would be the end of me”. But a year later, with true Australian humour,  he said it was awkward how the tree had turned red, "and I was still here,  steadily turning red myself as I realised that I had written myself into a corner”.

Famously he also once said "you don’t get out of life alive".

A man of great wit and sharp insight, James was lauded in Australia, as well as his adopted nation Britain, where he was a television critic, television personality, author and poet for most of his working life.

In the statement, his family said: "Clive died almost 10 years after his first terminal diagnosis, and one month after he laid down his pen for the last time.

The life of Clive James

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"He endured his ever-multiplying illnesses with patience and good humour, knowing until the last moment that he had experienced more than his fair share of this 'great, good world'. He was grateful to the staff at Addenbrooke's Hospital for their care and kindness, which unexpectedly allowed him so much extra time.

"His family would like to thank the nurses of the Arthur Rank Hospice at Home team for their help in his last days, which allowed him to die peacefully and at home, surrounded by his family and his books.''

Earlier this year James was left almost blind after an unsuccessful operation to remove a cancer on his cheek, yet he spent the year writing and editing an autobiographical anthology called The Fire of Joy.

He said this collection of poems is a raid on "the treasure-house of his mind’' and was finished a month before his death. It will be published in 2020.

James'  website instructs journalists "that if they really, sincerely need to run a biographical note they should feel free to quote any or all of the following, preferably keeping in mind that shorter is better, and that a single line is best.''

So this is how  Clive James wants to be remembered: James was born in Sydney, Australia, in 1939 and educated at Sydney Technical High School and Sydney University, where he was literary editor of the student newspaper Honi Soit and also directed the annual Union Revue. After a year spent as assistant editor of the magazine page of the Sydney Morning Herald, he sailed in late 1961 for England. Three years of would-be bohemian existence in London were succeeded by his entry into Cambridge University, where he read for a further degree while contributing to all the undergraduate periodicals and rising to the Presidency of Footlights.

He became well known as a witty television reviewer, and then for his poetry and memoirs.

James married the scholar Prue Shaw in 1968, and they had two daughters: Claerwen, a molecular biologist turned painter, and Lucinda, a civil servant and world expert on  CSI:Miami. 

In 1992 he was made a member of the Order of Australia, in 1999 an honorary Doctor of Letters of Sydney University, and in 2003 he received Australia’s premier award for poetry, the Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal. Later he was also given the NSW Premier's Award for Literature. In 2006 he was made an Honorary Doctor of Letters by the University of East Anglia and elected as an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He was also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 2008 he was awarded the George Orwell Special Prize for a lifetime achievement in journalism and broadcasting, and was later appointed an Honorary Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge. In 2014 he was awarded the President's Medal of the British Academy. The University of Essex made him a Doctor of the University in 2015. In the same year BAFTA awarded him a Special Award for lifetime achievement. He holds the Australian decoration AO and the British decoration CBE.

The Monty Python comedian Eric Idle tweeted: "Savage news this morning. To lose one friend is bad but to lose two reeks of carelessness. The beloved hilarious genius Jonathan Miller who dramatically changed my life three times, and dear Clive James my pal at Cambridge. Its a f...ing rainy day in LA appropriate for tears."Singer Alison Moyet was also among those who paid tribute, saying he was a "bright, beaming boy'. Morning breakfast show host Piers Morgan remembered him as "a brilliantly funny man". Actor Samuel West said: ''we were lucky to have him for so long after his diagnosis. We were lucky to have him at all. RIP Clive James.''

Australia's High Commissioner to the UK, George Brandis said he was saddened to hear of the death of James. "Mr James was an intellectual giant, who spent a large portion of his life living in the UK, but he remained quintessentially Australian all his life. He was unquestionably the greatest Australian poet of his time; as well as being a witty and incisive critic and a hugely gifted man of letters. He combined a true scholar’s erudition with a good natured scepticism that was very Australian. Mr James was a good friend of Australia House and he we will be missed by Australians and British people alike.”

From Japanese Maple:

“A final flood of colors will live on

“As my mind dies,

“Burned by my vision of a world that shone

“So brightly at the last, and then was gone.”