I could write pages on end about this book: it is so rich and challenging (with more than 800 pages of dense text) that it certainly does not leave you indifferent. For all clarity: this is not an encyclopaedia. It may be built around a little more than 100 historical figures, but it offers only a limited amount of biographical material. James uses the figures as an occasion to convey his personal opinions on a wide range of themes, a bit criss-cross and with regular diversions and repetitions, all in all the fruit of 40 years of intense reading.

This book is largely confined to the 20th century (only about 10 figures date from before that period), and at least two thirds of the persons discussed are related to the major global conflicts of that period (especially the Second World War, and in particular the Holocaust) and the ideologies that caused these conflicts, namely fascism/Nazism and communism. James only talks about the political leaders to a limited extent (although Hitler, Stalin and Mao constantly come looking around the corner); the emphasis is on the intellectuals and artists, especially from literature and much less from music, theatre, visual arts and architecture. Obviously (I’m really sad, I have to use the word ‘obviously’) it is an almost exclusively male company (only 11 female figures have gotten a chapter, though more of them show up within; but some obvious ones, like Virginia Woolf, just remain unmentioned). And the vast majority are European (mainly French and German, very often from Jewish descent). The United States and Latin America are also well cared for, but Asia and Africa in particular are almost completely absent. Thus, this is a thoroughly white book, and because of its high brow content also very elitist (that is not made up for by the few chapters about Tony Curtis, Coco Chanel or Dirk Cavett).

The ever-recurring mantra of James, which is underlined especially in his final chapter, is his unwavering belief in liberal democracy, in humanism and freedom. And there is, in my opinion, nothing wrong with that; it indicates that James really does have valuable things to tell, and it is his right to do so. But for our author, that belief is also an absolute criterion for morally weighing the many persons and currents mentioned. The heroes of James' story are those figures who contributed to those three phenomena (liberal democracy, humanism and freedom). He is utterly positive about intellectuals such as Raymond Aron, Benedetto Croce, François Furet, Wittold Gombrowicz, Leszek Kolakowski, Jean-François Revel, Ernesto Sabato, and Stefan Zweig, who - often against their surroundings - have openly opposed despotism, authoritarianism and all ideologies related to it.

And the bad ones are not only the classic demonic figures (Hitler, Mao and Trotsky get a separate chapter, Stalin curiously not, although he is constantly mentioned), but especially the intellectuals ("the useful idiots") who have been ideologically complicit in the crimes of the regimes of those demons, who collaborated with their game, or who consciously turned away and kept quiet. James directs his sharpest arrows against leftist intellectuals and artists such as Bertold Brecht, José Saramogo, the whole clique of French postmodernism, and especially against Jean-Paul Sartre (he gets the poisoniest vitriol on his head, and time and again James repeats what a perverse role Sartre has played in the post-war period); but also cowardly right-wing figures are blackened, like Jorge Louis Borges (yes!) and especially Ezra Pound (curiously Louis-Ferdinand Céline is only shortly mentioned).

So it is mainly authenticity that seems to be the criterion in the moral weighing process by Clive James, and rightly so. So I would not just call him "a right-wing bastard". All his opinions are clearly coloured ideologically, based on his belief in liberalism and humanism. But he uses this criterion as an inexorable razor edge, quite harsh sometimes. And occasionally James comes dangerously close to conservative-reactionary visions, for example in his attacks on multiculturalism and on Islam.

What bothered me most about this book is its pedantic character: James squeezes opinions, stacks them up, repeats them very often, but rarely you can find a proper argumentation. Occasionally he sometimes explains why he detests or admires this or that person or development, but in most cases his opinion simply stands out as a statement, and that is frustrating. Also, there’s a big portion of conceit in this book: James eagerly demonstrates his knowledge of foreign languages (he claims that he learned German, Italian, Spanish, Russian and a bit of Japanese just by reading the classics from that language, with a dictionary next to it), or he invokes his multiple encounters with famous men or women and ridicules their petty personality traits.

In short, this is definitely a very idiosyncratic book, (I have the impression that it could be twice as long if James had gotten his way by his publisher), but it also has its limitations, in style and in content. This book is formidable, breathtaking, and erudite, but also one-sided in its focus, very opinionated and provocative, regularly very self-indulgent and pedantic and therefore sometimes just enervating. But I’m sure that in coming years I’m going to browse through it many times again. ( )