Book description
'I suppose it was conceited of me. But it was fun. And I felt like
getting a bit of my own back on some of the people who'd conned and
flattered me into wasting all those years.'
In this wry, piercing short story from one of the greatest of all
British postwar writers, an ageing poet considers the value of his art
- and of the critics who've found genius in it. Then, with his final
work, he exercises a unique revenge . . .
Kingsley Amis was born in south London in 1922 and was educated at
the City of London School and St John's College, Oxford. At one time he
was a university lecturer, a keen reader of science fiction and a jazz
enthusiast. After the publication of Lucky Jim in 1954, which has become
a modern classic, Kingsley Amis wrote over twenty novels, including The
Alteration (1976), winner of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, The
Old Devils (1986), winner of the Booker Prize, and The Biographer's
Moustache (1995), which was to be his last book. He was awarded a CBE in
1981 and received a knighthood in 1990. He died in 1995.
