'In the closing pages of the last volume, I got married. The ceremony marked a rare outbreak of normality in my life. It was symbolized by my personal appearance. I was clean-shaven and had a hairstyle in reasonably close touch with my head.' 'After Unreliable Memoirs, Falling Towards England and May Week Was In June comes the next instalment in the ongoing saga that is Clive James's life. Taking us from Fleet Street to Clive James on TV, from Russian department stores to Paris fashion shows -- via fatherhood, some killer bees, and a satire starring Anne Robinson as Mrs Thatcher -- North Face of Soho is the larger-than-life story of a life lived to the full. 'It's not just that he writes a lot, but that he writes with intense perfectionism, and delivers his gags with honed elegance' Sunday Times '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, Evening Standard