Book description
Elegant, provocative and hugely entertaining, Kingsley Amis's memoirs
are filled with anecdotes, experiences and portraits of famous friends,
family, acquaintances (and a few eminent foes). From his childhood days
to Oxford and army life, his travels abroad and his years as a
successful novelist, Memoirs offers extraordinary insights into a unique
literary life. 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
published a variety of other work, including a survey of science fiction
entitled New Maps of Hell (1960); Rudyard Kipling and His World (1975);
The Golden Age of Science Fiction (1981); Collected Poems (1979); and
his Memoirs (1991). He wrote ephemerally on politics, education,
language, films, television, restaurants and drink. Kingsley Amis was
awarded the CBE in 1981 and received a knighthood in 1990. He died in
1995.
