James knows that this world is not to   everyone’s taste, that there will always be some who, like Kate Maltby writing recently in The Times, would “rather read Potter than Proust” (Harry, not Beatrix). He doesn’t despise them for it; as he says, his “own daughters both revisit / all of Jane Austen every year or two, / And neither feels the need for information / About a bunch of snobs across the Channel . . .” But neither does he want Proust to belong only to a tiny elite; his book is written in a spirit of intellectual generosity and optimism, as when he recommends the six-volume set: “a heavy number, perhaps, to lug to college, but what else do you want with you, The Lord of the Rings?”

James says he is not a Proust expert and that this is not a work of literary criticism, but he is a Proust appreciator, and that is what matters: “. . . and yet Swann’s love / For Odette, which included her bad taste, / Assures us of Proust’s seriousness, of how, / Within the limits of his birth, and class, / And poor health, and of being just one person, / He made the whole of life his stamping ground, / Even our jealousies and weaknesses .  .  .” What Proust does for Swann by understanding him, by accepting that his love for the terribly flawed Odette is as much a part of him as the exquisite taste and savoir-vivre that has made him beloved of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, Clive James does for Proust. He shows us how Proust can have an anti-Semite like Léon Daudet for a friend and might even have forgiven Cocteau his flirtations with the Occupation (had he lived to see them) because he knows that flirting is what people do, and yet still be “the wise and brave soldier for Dreyfus” aware that there are some things he could not forgive: “If the well-connected world conceives a taste for cruelty, kiss it goodbye.” Just as James — rightly — doesn’t let us forget the price Paris paid for saving its architectural integrity. This is the James of Cultural Amnesia, expressing disgust so eloquently while saving what’s left from the wreckage.

Proust, of course, doesn’t need saving. But, like the time capsule that would give future generations some idea of how we lived and what we loved, this book contains so much that does need saving, that James holds precious and can’t bear to imagine forgotten. Perhaps it is rather a lot: fifteen verse “rhapsodies” each responding to a different aspect of  “Lost time”, an introduction explaining how he came to write it, a postscript discussing the verse form, and then the notes that lead in and out of what Proust actually wrote (mainly out) — all are random,  rich and rewarding. In the end, it’s hard to pin down just what Gate of Lilacs is: a love letter to Proust? A taster for the uninitiated of what to expect? One side of a conversation between James and the reader about European culture at its best, a conversation full of “Have you read . . . ? Did you ever see . . . ? You must go to . . . “ and “I think you’d love . . .”

That’s what I wanted to do when I finished Gate of Lilacs: carry on the conversation. That’s got to be good.