All writers, it can be assumed, secretly fantasise about achieving what perhaps might be seen as a form of literary immortality: the dream of seeing their work continuing to be read long after their death.
Not so Kingsley Amis. Like his son, Martin, Kingsley was a celebrated and successful author, but always denied having any interest in what happened to his own books in the future. According to Martin: “My father used to say he didn’t care at all about posterity as he wouldn’t be around to enjoy its good opinion. ‘It’s no bloody use is it to me!’ he’d say.” But Martin, for one, didn’t believe him. “All that matters [to writers] is whether you’re read after you’re dead,” he said in 1996. “And it keeps writers honest, because it’s this big important question and they know they’ll never get a glimpse of it.”
We do not know whether Martin Amis, who died in May at the age of 73, will still be read long into the future. All that can be said for certain is that books such as The Rachel Papers (1973), Success (1978), Money (1984), London Fields (1989) and Time’s Arrow (1991) ensured he became one of the best known and successful British novelists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. He became a literary superstar, “the Mick Jagger of literature” according to his friend Ian McEwan, and the coolest of a bunch of new, young writers who emerged in the 1970s, a gang who included Christopher Hitchens, Salman Rushdie, Julian Barnes and McEwan himself.
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Denne historien er fra August 2023-utgaven av Best of British.
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THE FEW ON SCREEN
Steven Taylor looks at the Battle of Britain across film and TV
Table Service
Rachel Toy looks at the history of Ridgway Homemaker tableware
Hever Forever
Claire Saul studies the newly refurbished Boleyn Apartment at Hever Castle & Gardens - a castle fit for a queen
Shining a Light
Tony O’Neil tunes into the history of the last manned lightvessel
The Man With the Goldeneye
Film stills photographer Keith Hamshere describes how he came to enter the world of James Bond
THE ORIGINAL GOLDEN BALLS
lan Wheeler looks back on 70 years of Tiger comic and Roy of the Rovers, and chats to the man who edited and oversaw both titles
To Play the Queen
Chris Hallam looks back on the life of one of the UK’s best known lookalikes
POOLING RESOURCES
Martin Handley looks at what life was like after the Vernons Girls
POSTCARD FROM= SUSSEX
Bob Barton indulges in pleasure piers and fairground delights, as well as fulfilling a long-held ambition to visit the home of Rudyard Kipling
Oh, Miss Jones
Chris Hallam looks back at the origins and legacy of Rising Damp, ITV's most successful sitcom