Clive James, the man, aka Vivian Leopold James, gained fame as an Australian literary author also successful in Britain. This extremely active writer is also a poet and memoirist as well as a critic. He's been a broadcaster and done chat shows such as Clive James on Television and The Clive James Show and British television documentaries. But perhaps it was his autobiographical television series called Unreliable Memoirs that gave people the feeling they knew the man. (And he has published since the revelation of his relationship with Leanne, so his affair didn't hurt his career.)
Clive said he was a flirt but that he never went further. His audience and fans were actually shocked to hear that this married man had an affair at all.
Perhaps it's that the "affair" lasted 8 years and Leanne Edelsten spoke to the media about it. Unlike so many other women wrongly called "mistresses" in the media (over brief encounters with famous people), she was!
Leanne was an ex model and socialite and 24 years younger than Clive James. She was then 48 when the broken affair made news. She called him "Mr. Wolf" when she spoke to The Daily Mail, telling Writers Sara Nathan and Richard Shears for Mailonline (the internet version of Daily Mail), that he called her "Miss Hood" for Red Riding Hood.
She bragged that he was "a legend" of a lover, that men half his age couldn't keep up with him. She said he ravished her. Her words were like an advertisement for the youthful energy of some older men and figured in to his notoriety. Also reported was that the two lovers ate a Cherry Ripe candy bar and cup of tea before each time they had sex. Not kinky but cute.
Perhaps James went from fame to infamy due to the reaction of his wife, an academic named Prue (Prudence) Shaw, who responded to the news of his long term mistress by throwing him out of their house in the college town of Cambridge, England. He landed in a shabby basement student type apartment.
Leanne, continuing to bring up the sexy banter the two lovers shared and said she didn't feel sorry for the 73 year old's wife at all. (They'd been married 45 years.) That attitude of Leanne's made it all more interesting. And I think it's one that might be typical of Mistresses; one feels she loves him more than a wife or that if things were going well in the marriage he would not* be looking elsewhere. As one news story - there were dozens - indicated, shame is out of fashion.
Leanne said she and Clive met in Sydney in a restaurant and that Clive is not just a flirt but a funny flirt who always made her laugh. She was on her way to a second divorce and said the affair didn't start while she was legally married. She took the Edesten surname from her first husband,Geoffrey Walter Edelsten, whom she met at 19 when she was modeling.
Edesten, the first ex husband, has called her a liar.
According to reports in the press Edesten was a much older medical entrepreneur who founded Allied Medical Group with a partner in 2005.
Leanne said he asked her to marry him on their first date, showered her with riches including a personal helicopter, a sports car, and a sports team, the Sydney Swans. Also known for his fleet of Lamborghini's with vanity licence plates and Rolls-Royce's, the doctor was not the most conventional man.
As for Clive James, perhaps it's just that the affair with Leanne came to public attention. His marriage to Prue ended.
To the television show Current Affair, Leanne said that she outed the affair herself because she feared the British press was going to anyway. And she said she still loved Clive James. Was he really a confused old man when she met up with him to out herself and him for the show?
To Benjamin Millar of the Sydney Morning Herald she said, ''I want the truth, rather than come from a defensive position. He will be an incredibly hard act to follow.''
New technology was part of it. The two lovers used e-mail to communicate before and during the affair. Twitter users went wild making commentary when they learned about the affair. James refused to make comment to various journalists who approached him. He got around to apologizing for his behavior stating he had not been a good husband.
The relationship with Clive ended and Leanne moved on to a more modest life. She got an education. She's an intensive care nurse.
In 2015, Leanne made the news again after being assaulted outside St Vincent’s Hospital.
References for this month's post include the above mentioned media and references to Leanne and Clive on the Internet. Through this month I'll -provide links to some of the articles that I read which explore Leanne as a controversial figure.
If interested in Literary Mistresses you might find of interest here at MISTRESS MANIFESTO BLOGSPOT : Assia Gutman (whose relationship with poet Ted Hughes is said to have driven poet Sylvia Plath to suicide) October 2017 and Meta Carpenter, long distance mistress to William Faulkner August 2016.)
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* This post was slightly edited to clarify a misstatement of mine.
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