If I could put it into a sentence, I would say that it relies on the conviction that nothing creative should be excluded for the sake of any other conviction.

The word phenomenon isn’t even really English, certainly not an English form, and I am troubled by its misuse about as much as I am octopi vs. The second thing, though an adjunct of the first, is even more important: there is a lot at stake here. Elsewhere he mentions that a custom-made suit he bought in Italy was from the same tailor used by Gorbachev; said tailor mentioned James and Gorbachev share the exact same measurements (thank God we weren’t informed as to whether both gentlemen “dressed” to the same trouser leg). Two central, connecting threads running throughout his non-fiction are his uncompromising hatred of the abominations that were Hitler and the Holocaust, and the tyranny of Soviet Communism.

Russian while seated at a café, usually the Copper Kettle (which is at Cambridge – as he’s quick to remind you) or some exotic locale during his extensive travels and TV documentary shoots. Never a million laughs, he tells her his story about the daughter of Sejanus: a story which the reader will find in this book.

This book has inspired me to learn much more due to the stories he tells and the connections he makes. The times from which it emerged were hard on the nerves, even for those of us who were lucky enough to lead charmed lives. For a more detailed critique of the Introduction: James tells us that throughout his reading and writing career, he made “annotations” which seemed to be beyond a narrow subject, belonging to a “scheme” which could perhaps be approached far in the future, perhaps near the end of his life.

I have been in that apartment, and admired the Picasso, and envied its owner: I especially envied him his third wife, who had the same eyes as Picasso’s second mistress, although they were on different sides of her nose. James catalogues and explores the careers of many of the century's greatest thinkers, humanists, musicians, artists and philosophers, with illuminating excursions into the minds of those historical figures – from Sir Thomas Browne to Montesquieu – who paved the way. Throughout the book, almost to a comic extent (almost), James tells us what a toiler he has been in making himself an intellectual.

In this marvellous book you'll find a penetrating peon of praise to jazz aristocrat Duke Ellington, and you might also have good, if frustrating, fun arguing with James's blanket condemnation of the freer forms of jazz {he's really got it in for John Coltrane} on the perfectly sensible basis that it doesn't swing.

Who are the “proponents of Cultural Studies”, and how do they “clumsily imitate” this mysterious language? Possibly the most dramatic book of its type written since Camus’s The Rebel, Cultural Amnesia brings out, better than any formulaic manual of cultural studies, the true binding force of creativity. There were several moments where James caught me entirely off-guard with his stealth humor, and many of his essays are very enlightening. You have the Biggies like Hitler and Stalin but you get the people down the line like French collaborators and (Sartre was poseur compared to Camus. What they hate is the bewildering complexity of civilized life, which we will find hard to defend if we share the same aversion.