34 Facts About Kingsley Amis

Sir Kingsley William Amis was an English novelist, poet, critic and teacher.

Kingsley Amis wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, short stories, radio and television scripts, and works of social and literary criticism.

Kingsley Amis is best known for satirical comedies such as Lucky Jim, One Fat Englishman, Ending Up, Jake's Thing and The Old Devils.

Kingsley Amis was the father of the novelist Martin Amis.

Kingsley Amis's father George was an enthusiastic collector of books and Baptist chapel organist who was employed at a Brixton gentleman's outfitters as a tailor's assistant and was "the only grandparent [Amis] cared for".

In June 1941, Kingsley Amis joined the Communist Party of Great Britain.

Kingsley Amis broke with communism in 1956, in view of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's denunciation of Joseph Stalin in his speech "On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences".

Kingsley Amis returned to Oxford in October 1945 to complete his degree.

Kingsley Amis initially arranged for her to have a back-street abortion, but changed his mind, fearing for her safety.

Kingsley Amis was a lecturer in English at the University College of Swansea from 1949 to 1961.

The novel won the Somerset Maugham Award for fiction and Kingsley Amis became one of the writers known as the Angry Young Men.

Kingsley Amis resigned in 1963, intent on moving to Majorca, although he actually moved no further than London.

In 1963, Hilary discovered that Kingsley Amis was having an affair with the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard.

Hilary and Kingsley Amis separated in August and he went to live with Howard, divorcing Hilary and marrying Howard in 1965.

Kingsley Amis was cremated and his ashes laid to rest at Golders Green Crematorium.

Kingsley Amis is widely known as a comic novelist of life in mid- to late-20th-century Britain, but his literary work covered many genres: poetry, essays, criticism, short stories, food and drink, anthologies, and several novels in genres such as science fiction and mystery.

Kingsley Amis continued throughout his career to write poetry in a straightforward, accessible style that often masks a nuance of thought.

Kingsley Amis had been avidly reading science fiction since he was a boy and developed that interest in the Christian Gauss Lectures of 1958 while visiting Princeton University.

Girl, 20, for instance, is set in the world of classical music, in which Kingsley Amis had no part.

That intelligence is similarly displayed in the ecclesiastical matters in The Alteration; Kingsley Amis was neither a Roman Catholic nor a devotee of any church.

Kingsley Amis became associated with Ian Fleming's James Bond novels, which he admired, in the late 1960s, when he began composing critical works connected with Bond, either under a pseudonym or uncredited.

In 1968, Kingsley Amis wrote Colonel Sun, which was published under the pseudonym "Robert Markham".

Kingsley Amis took it in a markedly new direction: Auden had interpreted light verse to include "low" verse of working-class or lower-class origin, regardless of subject matter, while Kingsley Amis defined light verse as essentially light in tone, though not necessarily simple in composition.

Kingsley Amis was shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times, for Ending Up and Jake's Thing, and finally, as a prizewinner for The Old Devils in 1986.

Kingsley Amis eventually moved further to the political right, a development he discussed in the essay "Why Lucky Jim Turned Right" ; his conservatism and anti-communism are visible in works like the dystopian novel Russian Hide and Seek.

Kingsley Amis spoke at the Adam Smith Institute, arguing against government subsidy to the arts.

In one memoir, Kingsley Amis wrote, "Now and then I become conscious of having the reputation of being one of the great drinkers, if not one of the great drunks, of our time".

Kingsley Amis suggests this reflects a naive tendency in readers to apply the behaviour of his characters to himself.

Kingsley Amis enjoyed drink and spent a good deal of time in pubs.

For "many years" Kingsley Amis imposed a rigorous daily schedule on himself, segregating writing and drink.

Yet according to James, Kingsley Amis reached a turning point when his drinking ceased to be social and became a way of dulling his remorse and regret at his behaviour towards Hilly.

Kingsley Amis had an unclear relationship with antisemitism, which he sometimes expressed but claimed to dislike.

Kingsley Amis occasionally speculated on the commonly advanced Jewish stereotypes.

Kingsley Amis was married a second time, to the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard from 1965 to 1983, with whom he had no children.