On the shelves labelled ‘Just published and shortly to be remaindered’, customers of ‘all the best bookstores’ will perhaps notice a volume by Mr Clive James entitled Cultural Memories: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts. Indeed, it would be hard not to notice this 876 page monument to its author’s verbosity. US readers will perhaps not recognise the name of this television critic turned Conscience of the Twentieth Century, but UK readers will be long familiar with his inimitable brand of soft right-wing bombast masquerading as common sense and delivered with ponderous wit.