Clive James is the great appreciator of our time. Over the course of his career – which first took flight when The Metropolitan Critic was published in 1974, and in which he has worked as a novelist, poet, columnist, television critic, broadcaster, essayist, autobiographer, travel writer and translator – he has arguably done more than any figure of his generation to transmit to the reader, the viewer, the listener, his enthusiasm for the arts.
He has pursued this project at all cultural levels. The weighty novel, the satiric squib, the comic verse, the sedulously crafted lyric, the spine-tingling aria, the contagious pop song, the trashiest of trash television, the sweep and majesty of box set dramas – James treats them all with equal seriousness, equal care, equal love. And always he proceeds from the principle of enjoyment.
Much of James's own cultural enjoyment has come from television, and the record of this appreciation can in part be found in a series of wonderful pieces he wrote for the London Observer during his 10-year stint, from 1972 to 1982, as the paper's TV critic. Since then, he has continued to engage with and lose himself in the offerings of the small screen, indulging in late-night reruns, VHS videos and, more recently, collections of DVDs. Play All: A Bingewatcher's Notebook is in part a consideration of these developments.
It aims to evaluate the phenomenon of what James regards as today’s great televisual achievement: the grand and sprawling dramas that we tend to consume in the form of the box set.
The book begins where James's tenure at the Observer finished. By the time he had stopped contributing his weekly analysis of the nation's television, he had come to regard himself as an authority on the subject. He knew its strengths, weaknesses, limitations. He knew its history. He thought he could predict its future. And that thought provided the subject for his final column:
“I signed off with a confident prediction that although the American production centres... might go on picking up secondary earnings by flooding the world with stuff priced low because it had already made a profit in the home market, the droll sarcasm of the desk sergeant Phil Esterhaus (Michael Conrad) in Hill Street Blues would be about as clever as their effort would ever get. Seriousness, sophistication and the thrill of creativity could be supplied only by the older, wiser, more mature nations.”
Looking back on this spectacular error of judgement at the millennium, James “lashed” himself “for having so completely failed to guess what might happen to the American television output later on”. “It was,” he writes, “a punishing example of what ought to be a critical rule: if you can’t quell your urge to make predictions, don’t make them about the future.”
When in early 2010 a diagnosis of a “polite but insidious form of leukaemia” left James’s own future looking desperately attenuated and bleak, he decided to spend whatever time he had left reading, writing and indulging his “age-old, oil-burning TV and DVD habit” in the company of his younger daughter, Lucinda.
The experience of binge-watching the “new and often wonderful box sets” alongside “multiple rescreenings of the kind of old and not at all wonderful James Bond movie” prompted him to give an account of his response to the more recent televisual form, and to do so “in the context of the established brain patterns” of someone who still feels compelled to watch the TV of old.
James's summary of the book's objectives makes it sound more coherent than it is: for the most part its pages are free from concerted argument. But instead we get a series of ruminative and marvellously entertaining essays in appreciation of such shows as The Sopranos, The Wire, The West Wing, Game of Thrones and Battlestar Galactica.
James's considerations of these programmes feature many instances of penetrating and memorable cultural analysis: "Game of Thrones stands revealed as a crowd pleaser. To despise that, you have to imagine you aren't part of the crowd. But you are: the lesson that the twentieth century should have taught all intellectuals"; "One of the salient qualities of recent long-form television drama has been to employ the utmost sophistication to face us with the primitive; and to make us realize that civilisation has barbarism for a bottom level."
Not all of the book’s attempts to link television to the story of the struggle for civilisation are this compelling (I do not share James’s certainty that TV drama has been a force for good in securing equality for women). But they are always stimulating, and his discussions of the shows that populate the book are conducted in a mode that unites an acute critical intelligence with warmth, elegance and clarity of expression.
They are also amusing and witty ("Jon Hamm [Don Draper, Mad Men] is the actor with everything, except the sense to change his name") and characterised by an enthusiasm for creative endeavour that is inspiring and contagious.
Yet the book is not without shortcomings. James’s prose can sometimes be clichéd, and he has an off-putting tendency to dwell on the appearance of beautiful female leads. This, however, is a weakness he is aware of, and the awareness allows him to be funny about it.
As he says in one of the lovely autobiographical digressions that appear throughout the book: "I am pledged to run these remarks past the women of my family, and they still want to know why I, at my age, and in my depleted state of health, sobbed aloud when Zoe Barnes [House of Cards, played by Kate Mara] got pushed under a train."
Matthew Adams lives in London and writes for the TLS, The Spectator and the Literary Review.
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
What should do investors do now?
What does the S&P 500's new all-time high mean for the average investor?
Should I be euphoric?
No. It's fine to be pleased about hearty returns on your investments. But it's not a good idea to tie your emotions closely to the ups and downs of the stock market. You'll get tired fast. This market moment comes on the heels of last year's nosedive. And it's not the first or last time the stock market will make a dramatic move.
So what happened?
It's more about what happened last year. Many of the concerns that triggered that plunge towards the end of last have largely been quelled. The US and China are slowly moving toward a trade agreement. The Federal Reserve has indicated it likely will not raise rates at all in 2019 after seven recent increases. And those changes, along with some strong earnings reports and broader healthy economic indicators, have fueled some optimism in stock markets.
"The panic in the fourth quarter was based mostly on fears," says Brent Schutte, chief investment strategist for Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Company. "The fundamentals have mostly held up, while the fears have gone away and the fears were based mostly on emotion."
Should I buy? Should I sell?
Maybe. It depends on what your long-term investment plan is. The best advice is usually the same no matter the day — determine your financial goals, make a plan to reach them and stick to it.
"I would encourage (investors) not to overreact to highs, just as I would encourage them not to overreact to the lows of December," Mr Schutte says.
All the same, there are some situations in which you should consider taking action. If you think you can't live through another low like last year, the time to get out is now. If the balance of assets in your portfolio is out of whack thanks to the rise of the stock market, make adjustments. And if you need your money in the next five to 10 years, it shouldn't be in stocks anyhow. But for most people, it's also a good time to just leave things be.
Resist the urge to abandon the diversification of your portfolio, Mr Schutte cautions. It may be tempting to shed other investments that aren't performing as well, such as some international stocks, but diversification is designed to help steady your performance over time.
Will the rally last?
No one knows for sure. But David Bailin, chief investment officer at Citi Private Bank, expects the US market could move up 5 per cent to 7 per cent more over the next nine to 12 months, provided the Fed doesn't raise rates and earnings growth exceeds current expectations. We are in a late cycle market, a period when US equities have historically done very well, but volatility also rises, he says.
"This phase can last six months to several years, but it's important clients remain invested and not try to prematurely position for a contraction of the market," Mr Bailin says. "Doing so would risk missing out on important portfolio returns."
Straightforward ways to reduce sugar in your family's diet
- Ban fruit juice and sodas
- Eat a hearty breakfast that contains fats and wholegrains, such as peanut butter on multigrain toast or full-fat plain yoghurt with whole fruit and nuts, to avoid the need for a 10am snack
- Give young children plain yoghurt with whole fruits mashed into it
- Reduce the number of cakes, biscuits and sweets. Reserve them for a treat
- Don’t eat dessert every day
- Make your own smoothies. Always use the whole fruit to maintain the benefit of its fibre content and don’t add any sweeteners
- Always go for natural whole foods over processed, packaged foods. Ask yourself would your grandmother have eaten it?
- Read food labels if you really do feel the need to buy processed food
- Eat everything in moderation
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The specs: 2018 BMW R nineT Scrambler
Price, base / as tested Dh57,000
Engine 1,170cc air/oil-cooled flat twin four-stroke engine
Transmission Six-speed gearbox
Power 110hp) @ 7,750rpm
Torque 116Nm @ 6,000rpm
Fuel economy, combined 5.3L / 100km
The five stages of early child’s play
From Dubai-based clinical psychologist Daniella Salazar:
1. Solitary Play: This is where Infants and toddlers start to play on their own without seeming to notice the people around them. This is the beginning of play.
2. Onlooker play: This occurs where the toddler enjoys watching other people play. There doesn’t necessarily need to be any effort to begin play. They are learning how to imitate behaviours from others. This type of play may also appear in children who are more shy and introverted.
3. Parallel Play: This generally starts when children begin playing side-by-side without any interaction. Even though they aren’t physically interacting they are paying attention to each other. This is the beginning of the desire to be with other children.
4. Associative Play: At around age four or five, children become more interested in each other than in toys and begin to interact more. In this stage children start asking questions and talking about the different activities they are engaging in. They realise they have similar goals in play such as building a tower or playing with cars.
5. Social Play: In this stage children are starting to socialise more. They begin to share ideas and follow certain rules in a game. They slowly learn the definition of teamwork. They get to engage in basic social skills and interests begin to lead social interactions.
About Tenderd
Started: May 2018
Founder: Arjun Mohan
Based: Dubai
Size: 23 employees
Funding: Raised $5.8m in a seed fund round in December 2018. Backers include Y Combinator, Beco Capital, Venturesouq, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, Paul Buchheit, Justin Mateen, Matt Mickiewicz, SOMA, Dynamo and Global Founders Capital
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
The National's picks
4.35pm: Tilal Al Khalediah
5.10pm: Continous
5.45pm: Raging Torrent
6.20pm: West Acre
7pm: Flood Zone
7.40pm: Straight No Chaser
8.15pm: Romantic Warrior
8.50pm: Calandogan
9.30pm: Forever Young
The specs
Engine: 3.0-litre six-cylinder turbo
Power: 398hp from 5,250rpm
Torque: 580Nm at 1,900-4,800rpm
Transmission: Eight-speed auto
Fuel economy, combined: 6.5L/100km
On sale: December
Price: From Dh330,000 (estimate)
NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
2025 Fifa Club World Cup groups
Group A: Palmeiras, Porto, Al Ahly, Inter Miami.
Group B: Paris Saint-Germain, Atletico Madrid, Botafogo, Seattle.
Group C: Bayern Munich, Auckland City, Boca Juniors, Benfica.
Group D: Flamengo, ES Tunis, Chelsea, (Leon banned).
Group E: River Plate, Urawa, Monterrey, Inter Milan.
Group F: Fluminense, Borussia Dortmund, Ulsan, Mamelodi Sundowns.
Group G: Manchester City, Wydad, Al Ain, Juventus.
Group H: Real Madrid, Al Hilal, Pachuca, Salzburg.
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kumulus Water
Started: 2021
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
Based: Tunisia
Sector: Water technology
Number of staff: 22
Investment raised: $4 million
A MINECRAFT MOVIE
Director: Jared Hess
Starring: Jack Black, Jennifer Coolidge, Jason Momoa
Rating: 3/5
Petrarch: Everywhere a Wanderer
Christopher Celenza,
Reaktion Books
If you go
The flights
Emirates flies from Dubai to Funchal via Lisbon, with a connecting flight with Air Portugal. Economy class returns cost from Dh3,845 return including taxes.
The trip
The WalkMe app can be downloaded from the usual sources. If you don’t fancy doing the trip yourself, then Explore offers an eight-day levada trails tour from Dh3,050, not including flights.
The hotel
There isn’t another hotel anywhere in Madeira that matches the history and luxury of the Belmond Reid's Palace in Funchal. Doubles from Dh1,400 per night including taxes.
