Nick Clarke (1948–2006)

Well constructed but not terribly gripping, this book tries to cover the contemporary era, or rather the changes of the author's lifetime, with a portrait of selected celebrities on the model of Strachey's 'Eminent Victorians'. Somehow their life stories don't catch fire, nor do they do much in the way of debunking the status of these 'noted Elizabethans'. For me the sparse memoirs of the author's own progress from childhood through career, and the biographical details of his father, presented as a counterpoint to the flightiness of our contemporary culture, are the more intersting part of the book.… (mer)