His apartment in a converted warehouse 200m from the Thames is full of books, many written in the German, French, Spanish and Italian he has taught himself. Upstairs is a small dance floor reserved for his hobby, tango.
Even now, as he publishes North Face of Soho, James has largely managed to keep the dynamics of his marriage to himself and his family, somehow enjoying the increasingly rare combination of celebrity and privacy. "That's compulsory," he explains. "My family has an absolute embargo against talking about them. I'm very proud of them, by the way, but even that I can only say off the record. It's a hanging offence to talk about my family. I just have to hope I can be interesting enough about the other stuff to get past that."
As funny and engaging as its predecessors, the latest memoir runs from his 1968 arrival in London as a hungry freelance writer through to 1982, when he had become something of a media star. This was the decisive period of his career, when he developed a writing voice that is a carefully honed stream of gags and thoughtful observations, one that is remarkably close to his spoken voice. He laughs when I tell him that I had found it disconcerting while reading this volume to keep hearing in my mind a running narration in his nasal Australian accent and rhythmic cadences, which he likens to "a Benzedrine addict being held at gunpoint".
[HT: Arts & Letters Daily ]
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