Kingsley Amis | Author

Described by his biographer Zachary Leader as ‘the finest English comic novelist’ of his age, Sir Kingley Amis was a jack of all literary trades, writing everything from restaurant reviews, radio plays, political polemics, science fiction and poetry.

Amis produced 24 novels, more than a dozen collections of poetry, short stories and criticism and a large miscellany of other work, including his own memoirs.

At Oxford, he met Philip Larkin, with whom he formed the most important friendship of his life. Larkin would go on to provide significant encouragement and advice during the writing of Amis’ second novel – and his first success – Lucky Jim. It was through this work that he quickly became associated with the Angry Young Men literary movement.

Amis was not held back by the boundaries of genre, and by the late 1960s, he began composing critical works connected with Bond. In 1965, he wrote the popular James Bond Dossier, as well as The Book of Bond. In 1968, Amis wrote Colonel Sun, which was published under the pseudonym Robert Markham.

Amis was knighted in 1990, and he died five years later, at the age of 73.