Since his arrival in London from Sydney in 1961 (ten years later than his decade-older friend and fellow writer Peter Porter) Clive James has travelled the world with astounding dash and has left records, not in bottles found on distant beaches but in hastily composed "postcards", published in newspapers and then books by leading international publishers. The mood and manner are caught in Flying Visits: Postcards from the Observer 1976-83, which after appearing in the Observer were collected and published by Jonathan Cape in hardback in 1984 and by Picador in paperback in 1985. More rueful, less excitable than James, Porter writes in a poem called "Anxiety's Air Miles" 1 of himself as a "frequent flier" after he has "ringed the globe five times" -a minuscule fraction of James's air travel. James's public life as writer, entertainer and television celebrity might indicate a less reflective persona than we find in Porter's work, but I suggest in this essay that James's range and volume of work does not preclude depth and that the humorous, wise-cracking persona is complemented by a more serious (but not earnest) self who has reflected on the rise and fall of empires, and their legacies.While Clive James can be accurately presented as an all-rounder in the cricketing sense that he bats, bowls, keeps wickets and fields (often simultaneously), he himself prefers other sports for his metaphoric matrices, including surfing, skiing and racing cars. In later middle-age, he has sportingly learnt the tango. James's literary sports include essays, poems, plays, songs, novels and autobiography together with theatre, television, radio and Internet programmes. In a sense, his public life is a nonstop festival of words. In his sixty-fifth year, there were few signs of diminution in the kind of energy and ambition of earlier years. Perhaps he foresaw this period of his life in an early rock lyric called "Senior Citizens", which he wrote for Pete Atkin. Here is one verse:Clive James, Humour and Empire
