Visions Before Midnight

Visions Before Midnight is a selection of the television criticism that Clive James wrote in his first four years as television critic for The Observer, 1972-1976. The selection begins with a piece on the 1972 Summer Olympics, and ends with a piece on the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. It was first published in 1977. The title derives from Sir Thomas Browne: Dreams out of the ivory gate, and visions before midnight.

James had previously written one piece per month on television for The Listener, whose editor, Karl Miller, had been an important influence on James, and had allowed him to, ' write a column which eschewed solemnity so thoroughly that it courted the frivolous. Like Lichtenberg Karl Miller appreciated the kind of joke that unveils a problem: if your gags had a serious reason for being there, they stayed in.' David Astor brought James to The Observer and his career as a weekly television columnist began. He explains in the preface; 'Television was a natural part of my life. I loved watching it and I loved being on it. The second passion has since somewhat faded, but the first remains strong, and was very powerful at the time. I watched just about everything, including the junk. The screen teemed with unsummable activity. It was full of visions, legends, myths, fables. T.V was scarcely something you could feel superior to. It was too various. What I had to offer was negative capability, a capability for submission to the medium. I was the first to submit myself to Alastair Burnet and find him fascinating. No critic before me had ever regarded David Vine as a reason for switching the set on.'

In the preface James says that the idea of publishing a selection of his television criticism had been in his mind since speaking with Kenneth Tynan at a reception at the Garrick Club. Tynan had said he hoped James would publish some of his criticism but averred that, 'A television critic would have to know everything, and who knows everything?' James had been lost for an answer at the time but in the Preface replies,'It isn't necessary to know everything - just to remember that nobody else does either.'

Programmes reviewed:

• Coverage of the 1972 Summer Olympics - "the accompanying talk rarely reached adequacy"
• If Britain had Fallen (a 3 part documentary)
• Six Faces (with Kenneth More)
• The Incredible Robert Baldick (with Robert Hardy)
• Mrs Warren's Profession with Coral Brown - "showed that Coral Brown is as good at George Bernard Shaw as Lady Windermere's Fan proved she was good at Oscar Wilde."
• War and Peace - " script and direction working together as fatally as Laurel and Hardy trying to climb a wall - Morag Hood arouses an unquenchable desire to throw a tarpaulin over her and nail down the corners."
• Something to Say - discussion with Isaiah Berlin, Bryan Magee and Stuart Hampshire,
  The Commanders - episode dealing with Bomber Harris
  
• Cedric Messina's production of King Oedipus
• David Mercer's The Bankrupt starring Joss Ackland and Sheila Allen
• Miss World - "Just a pack of fair to middling, not unpleasing, impenetrably dopey broads."
• But Seriously, It's Sheila Hancock
• Alun Owen's The Web
• World in Action on The Angry Brigade
• Marlene Dietrich's special Dietrich
• Richard Nixon's address - "There can be no whitewash at the White House"
• Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads - "Sequels are rarely as strong as the originals, but 'Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads' is currently breaking the rule."
• Sportsnight - "Ludmila Tourischeva's beautiful programme on the asymmetric bars has the mature inevitability we have so far missed in the work of the more spectacular Olga Korbut."
• Romantic versus Classic Art - with Kenneth Clark , "elegant, perspicuous sentences, television's premier talking head."
• It's a Knockout
• Panorama - special on Alec Douglas-Home
• One Pair of Eyes with Antonia Fraser
• Miss TVTimes 1973 - "each girl was turned loose in Madame Tussauds and asked to cuddle up to the effigy of the man she admired most", one girl chose Henry VIII - "because he, piped the lass, had all the qualities she'd like in a man."
• A Kind of Freedom with Richard Neville
• Divorce His, Divorce Hers with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor