At the Pillars of Hercules

His second book of cultural criticism, At the Pillars of Hercules sees Clive James take on artists from W. H. Auden to Lillian Hellman, and from T. S. Eliot to Norman Mailer, in a collection that confirmed his reputation as a writer of entertaining, insightful essays.

Named for a now much-missed Soho pub that was long the regular haunt of literary...