James died from leukemia in 2019 at age 80. In the nine years following his terminal diagnosis, he wrote movingly about his illness — including in his 2015 poetry collection, Sentenced to Life. An Indian summer of writing was just beginning, long after the valedictory interviews were done. He wrote a translation of Dante’s The Divine Comedy (2013), a collection of essays, Poetry Notebook: 2006-2014 (2014) and an analysis of the radical change in TV viewing habits, Play All: A Bingewatcher’s Notebook (2016). But Castro’s more typical form of communication is the speech, and his speeches have to be experienced to be believed. Most of the jokes made about them are made by people who have never really listened to him: they have just seen footage of him tossing his beard about while jabbing his finger at the air. In real life, if it can be called that, Castro carries the leader’s monologue to lengths that should be physically impossible: a dedicated scuba-diver, he can probably do without the oxygen tanks, because he must have the lungs of a sperm whale. Camus, who played soccer, would have admired Castro’s sporting proclivities but might have found his oratory suspect. Offshore admirers of Castro’s putative intellectual vitality are fond of explaining how the people of Cuba—happy, salsa-dancing folk whose simple minds can be read from long range—find his oratorical powers endlessly entertaining, but the emphasis should be on the endlessly, not the entertaining. A sceptic might note that Castro’s supposedly spellbinding effect presupposes the absence of other forms of verbal entertainment, and indeed the absence of a substantial part of the Cuban population. Cubans who head for Miami with nothing but an inflatable inner tube between them and the sharks are unanimous on the point: Castro’s speeches would have been enough to drive them out even if the regime’s other promises of abundance had been kept.

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).

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He got through all that. Then in the end, the camp was liberated. They were sent home on a flight of B-24 Liberators so they wouldn't have to wait for a ship. One of the Liberators got caught in a typhoon over Taiwan and crashed with all aboard. My father was one of them. And if individual essays are often exceptional, the way they fit together in the book as a whole has problems. The main one being that there is almost a theme to the book, but not quite. The theme which looms largest is the way in which the twentieth century can be characterised as a clash between two forms of totalitarianism, left and right. But to really make this work, about a quarter of the essays, the ones which don't bear on this subject, would need to be cut. Alternatively if it's just going to be a random collection of biographies, a different quarter should be cut, namely some of those which do concern totalitarianism. As it is, we are left halfway between, not sure if the book is darting around with general curiosity, or if it's trying to build some kind of cumulative argument. Vivian James was spared further feminisation when Gone With the Wind was released. “After Vivien Leigh played Scarlett O’Hara, the name became irrevocably a girl’s name no matter how you spelled it,” he wrote, so his mother let him become Clive after a character in a Tyrone Power movie.

And that last sentence, in all its awkwardness and so-preachy exposition, its scornful lecturing to the students who cannot by themselves see the amazingly suave wit of Revel’s “wristy flourish”, is so typical of James. He aches for that “wristy flourish” himself, and simply produces a messy ejaculation. Nowadays, I can go on stage to relax. I'm never more at ease than when I go on stage and talk for an hour, an hour and a half." Even my career on television, I was essentially a writer who was saying it. I'd write it in my head just before I said it. But what I didn't want to do is leave anything out. I still haven't written a play and I missed that. I might do that yet. I think the essay is the really powerful literary form of today, even more so than the novel.

He was appointed CBE in 2012 and AO in 2013. In 2008 he was awarded a George Orwell special prize for writing and broadcasting, and in 2015 he received a special award from Bafta for his contribution to television.