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Memoirs (Vintage Classic) [Paperback] [Jul 01, 2004] Amis, Kingsley
From the rear "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).
352 pages, Paperback
Published July 1, 2004
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192 people want to read
About the author
Kingsley Amis
212 books553 followersBest known novels of British writer Sir Kingsley William Amis include
Lucky Jim
(1954) and
The Old Devils
(1986).
This English poet, critic, and teacher composed more than twenty-three collections, short stories, radio and television scripts, and books of social and literary criticism. He fathered Martin Amis.
William Robert Amis, a clerk of a mustard manufacturer, fathered him. He began his education at the city of London school, and went up to college of Saint John, Oxford, in April 1941 to read English; he met Philip Larkin and formed the most important friendship of his life. After only a year, the Army called him for service in July 1942. After serving as a lieutenant in the royal corps of signals in the Second World War, Amis returned to Oxford in October 1945 to complete his degree. He worked hard and got a first in English in 1947, and then decided to devote much of his time.
Pen names: [authorRobert Markham|553548] and William Bill Tanner
This English poet, critic, and teacher composed more than twenty-three collections, short stories, radio and television scripts, and books of social and literary criticism. He fathered Martin Amis.
William Robert Amis, a clerk of a mustard manufacturer, fathered him. He began his education at the city of London school, and went up to college of Saint John, Oxford, in April 1941 to read English; he met Philip Larkin and formed the most important friendship of his life. After only a year, the Army called him for service in July 1942. After serving as a lieutenant in the royal corps of signals in the Second World War, Amis returned to Oxford in October 1945 to complete his degree. He worked hard and got a first in English in 1947, and then decided to devote much of his time.
Pen names: [authorRobert Markham|553548] and William Bill Tanner
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
August 1, 2009
To be honest I’ve always preferred the novels of Amis Sr to Amis Jr. Although I haven’t dipped as extensively into Martin’s work as some of my contemporaries, nothing I’ve read so far has matched – say – ‘Lucky Jim’. Indeed I think the younger Amis’s books would benefit from him taking a page at the beginning to write: “My name is Martin Amis and I am very clever.” Once those two facts have been clearly established he wouldn’t need to bang on about them in the prose and we’d no doubt have much more insightful novels.
But I digress.
Having taken KA’s ‘Memoirs’ from the library, I thought that, in the interest of fairness, it was only right I also borrowed MA’s ‘Experience’. Reading them back to back has been an interesting diversion (not least because father and son have vastly different styles), but one which shows the strengths and limitations of both men.
Kingsley Amis’s book is a collection of essays, wherein our author looks back over various periods of life and reminisces about various writers he’d met. As such we learn about his time in Oxford, Swansea and America; he talks about his friendships with Philip Larkin and Anthony Powell; and gets to settle scores with the likes of John Wain and Roald Dahl. The format of the book might make it a volume to dip into rather than read all at once, but all his hallmarks are here – pomposity, booze, a fear of the modern and – cringingly at times – sexism.
Reading it I imagine that to have a drink with the older Amis would be to enter a world where the cantankerous had been made flesh. However, it’s impossible to deny that he was a witty old bugger and there are some genuinely laugh out loud lines.
The problem with it as an actual book is that it’s a collection rather than an actual book. There are themes that reoccur, there are dramatis personae who reappear, but in the main it’s a series of vignettes – some more comic than others. Furthermore, as the author makes clear in the preface, he is trying to focus on others rather than himself, so we end up with this odd affair where KA as a narrator remains somewhat unknowable (and certainly unexamined). As such I can’t help thinking that it would have been better to frame a lot of these incidents as fiction and let the author run wild with a narrator who is present for the reader. Yes, there are a lot of good things in this book, but as a whole it’s not the enjoyable read his best novels are.
Now focusing on one’s self is something that Martin has never had a problem with. As such I was expecting a more personally welcoming affair, and for the most part I wasn’t disappointed. We find out about Martin’s family in these pages, and as such more about Kingsley Amis’s family than we do in Kingsley’s Amis’s book. Martin does provide some very touching and real moments, and it is the more emotional of the two, but the flaws I’ve always found in Martin’s writing are still in evidence.
Firstly, the self absorption. Okay, this is an autobiography and so the writer is allowed to bang on about himself. Perfectly true. Martin writes really well on the death of his father and the disappearance of his cousin Lucy Partingdon (who fell victim to serial killer Fred West) but we also get pages of prose given over to the author’s dental problems. Yes, toothache is painful and the dental procedures MA went through sound horrific even to someone whose read a lot of horror, but does anyone really need a 100 pages on it?
Secondly, there’s the style. At one point Phillip Larkin accuses Martin of “over-writing” one of his novels. This is strikes me as a perfectly valid criticism and one that holds true for this book too. It is frustrating that this autobiography can veer from tender descriptions of family and loss, to lengthy – and wordy – paragraphs of po-faced pretension. (The young MA is quoted describing Keats thus: “All right when he’s not saying ‘I’m a Poet. Got that?’” The same criticism can be levelled at him as a writer.) The format also lacks focus, and veers off in some quite odd directions – for example, an interview the author did with John Travolta is mentioned again and again for no discernable reason. This is certainly an area where KA wins out, as his book is designed to concentrate on one individual – and sometimes one anecdote – at a time.
Martin is something of a ghost in the text of his father’s book. For the most part he is fleetingly mentioned, so if you didn’t already know that he was a novelist you might just mistake him for an enthusiastic literary reviewer. (Although Kingsley does take the time to administer a kick to two of his son’s literary idols – Saul Bellow and John Updike.) His father however looms large in Martin’s book, and is far more of a real person than he is in his own volume.
I have given both books three stars. Kingsley’s book is fragmentary and episodic in design, but the prose is crisp and the text is genuinely funny; while Martin’s is incredibly touching in parts and more emotionally honest, does contain the same literary ticks that disturb me in his fiction. However, if you have an interest in either man and want a book to read from start to finish, then the son’s is the one to go for.
But I digress.
Having taken KA’s ‘Memoirs’ from the library, I thought that, in the interest of fairness, it was only right I also borrowed MA’s ‘Experience’. Reading them back to back has been an interesting diversion (not least because father and son have vastly different styles), but one which shows the strengths and limitations of both men.
Kingsley Amis’s book is a collection of essays, wherein our author looks back over various periods of life and reminisces about various writers he’d met. As such we learn about his time in Oxford, Swansea and America; he talks about his friendships with Philip Larkin and Anthony Powell; and gets to settle scores with the likes of John Wain and Roald Dahl. The format of the book might make it a volume to dip into rather than read all at once, but all his hallmarks are here – pomposity, booze, a fear of the modern and – cringingly at times – sexism.
Reading it I imagine that to have a drink with the older Amis would be to enter a world where the cantankerous had been made flesh. However, it’s impossible to deny that he was a witty old bugger and there are some genuinely laugh out loud lines.
The problem with it as an actual book is that it’s a collection rather than an actual book. There are themes that reoccur, there are dramatis personae who reappear, but in the main it’s a series of vignettes – some more comic than others. Furthermore, as the author makes clear in the preface, he is trying to focus on others rather than himself, so we end up with this odd affair where KA as a narrator remains somewhat unknowable (and certainly unexamined). As such I can’t help thinking that it would have been better to frame a lot of these incidents as fiction and let the author run wild with a narrator who is present for the reader. Yes, there are a lot of good things in this book, but as a whole it’s not the enjoyable read his best novels are.
Now focusing on one’s self is something that Martin has never had a problem with. As such I was expecting a more personally welcoming affair, and for the most part I wasn’t disappointed. We find out about Martin’s family in these pages, and as such more about Kingsley Amis’s family than we do in Kingsley’s Amis’s book. Martin does provide some very touching and real moments, and it is the more emotional of the two, but the flaws I’ve always found in Martin’s writing are still in evidence.
Firstly, the self absorption. Okay, this is an autobiography and so the writer is allowed to bang on about himself. Perfectly true. Martin writes really well on the death of his father and the disappearance of his cousin Lucy Partingdon (who fell victim to serial killer Fred West) but we also get pages of prose given over to the author’s dental problems. Yes, toothache is painful and the dental procedures MA went through sound horrific even to someone whose read a lot of horror, but does anyone really need a 100 pages on it?
Secondly, there’s the style. At one point Phillip Larkin accuses Martin of “over-writing” one of his novels. This is strikes me as a perfectly valid criticism and one that holds true for this book too. It is frustrating that this autobiography can veer from tender descriptions of family and loss, to lengthy – and wordy – paragraphs of po-faced pretension. (The young MA is quoted describing Keats thus: “All right when he’s not saying ‘I’m a Poet. Got that?’” The same criticism can be levelled at him as a writer.) The format also lacks focus, and veers off in some quite odd directions – for example, an interview the author did with John Travolta is mentioned again and again for no discernable reason. This is certainly an area where KA wins out, as his book is designed to concentrate on one individual – and sometimes one anecdote – at a time.
Martin is something of a ghost in the text of his father’s book. For the most part he is fleetingly mentioned, so if you didn’t already know that he was a novelist you might just mistake him for an enthusiastic literary reviewer. (Although Kingsley does take the time to administer a kick to two of his son’s literary idols – Saul Bellow and John Updike.) His father however looms large in Martin’s book, and is far more of a real person than he is in his own volume.
I have given both books three stars. Kingsley’s book is fragmentary and episodic in design, but the prose is crisp and the text is genuinely funny; while Martin’s is incredibly touching in parts and more emotionally honest, does contain the same literary ticks that disturb me in his fiction. However, if you have an interest in either man and want a book to read from start to finish, then the son’s is the one to go for.
September 18, 2012
Despite not knowing a lot of the people he discusses, I found this to be a good read...
December 15, 2019
Only Kingsley Amis could have a disposition so deliciously sour that he would let slip the fact that he saw Miles Davis play in a club in the 50s and have it not be a brag but a *complaint*.
June 29, 2025
Memoirs by Kingsley Amis, author of Take A Girl Like You and more than a dozen other masterpieces http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/06/t...
10 out of 10
This could be the fifteenth opus written by this Magister Ludi that I have enjoyed and it is clear from that that I am an admirer, indeed, he is one of my three top favorite authors, the other two being Marcel Proust and Somerset Maugham.
The danger with reading these Memoirs (or other) would be that coming to know the author better, the reader might feel like distancing himself (herself or themselves) from the human being that has written this and other works and might be deterred from reading more by the same person, as may happen if you come across Intellectuals by Paul Johnson, wherefrom one gets a closer look at the lives of Leo Tolstoy, Ernest Hemingway, Henrik Ibsen, and especially Jean Jacques Rousseau – the latter left his children at the door at a time when nine out of ten kids in that situation would die – and finds the very dark side, one that repels http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/06/i...
Alhamdulillah, there is nothing outrageous in this autobiography and one does not end it with the feeling that one wants no more from the same source, on the contrary; however, what could happen is a sort of detachment from other figures that one admires, such as Evelyn Waugh – author of the tremendous, fabulous Brideshead Revisited and at least another phenomenal books
http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/11/b... - who appears in the Memoirs as less than enchanting: there is character that says Waugh was ‘a horrible little man, ingratiating himself with the powerful and the rich and very courteous and flattering while the person in question was a lady, and then totally ignoring her, once she has lost that title’, now whether we could believe this or not is another question, but the comments around a BBC interview suggest Waugh was rather difficult.
Another writer that I admire is Anthony Burgess, author of the dazzling, effervescent, magical A Clockwork Orange, about whose title we learn from the Memoirs that it could refer to something strange, in old tongue, and then Burgess explains that it could be related to the word that means man in Malay and thus we could interpret it as ‘Mechanical Man’, which is what the protagonist is turned into at some point http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/12/a...
Kingsley Amis is rather ironical or even cynical about the notion that someone is obsessed with language – keeping language in high esteem is fine – and thinks this name choosing takes the matter too far – well, words to that effect I hope – and then we find more about the relationship with Anthony Burgess, who has written reviews praising the works of Kingsley Amis, but the latter could not do the same in all honesty with the books of the former (not all of them anyway) so he avoided writing about some of them, until he reached the autobiography, in which he found some points to disagree with.
Thus, at their next meeting, Anthony Burgess came abruptly to the point (as always, Kingsley Amis is hilarious in rendering this and all other encounters, scenes, dialogues, well, everything) without so much as how are you, and says something like ‘I have always treated you well, lauded your books and you found little to say about my work’, and then end of conversation, but with the next book, Burgess returned to the same good review; we find from the wondrous, exhilarating Belles Lettres Papers http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/05/t... that Anthony Burgess was very nice on almost or all authors and their books…
Most writers, or those that I know of, admire, come out with their reputations untarnished, and even the aforementioned example, is just a case of Anthony Burgess being perhaps to kind to books that deserve more criticism and then expecting a similar treatment for some of his lesser output; one other Magister Ludi who is on my list of ten favorite luminaries is Anthony Powell or Tony, which is how Kingsley Amis refers to him, the one that gave humanity (Tony) the absolute chef d’oeuvre A Dance To The Music Of Time http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/07/a...
One issue w may have with reading these Memoirs, and for that matter, almost any book by Magister Kingsley, would be what it does to the fellow that wants to write and understands that he, she or they cannot reach this glorious level, and then the thought of what Demigod Amis would say about your production could be daunting, he is very clear on quite a few of those who are appreciated by the public, he dismisses most American writers, if not all, with the caveat that, were he to navigate (he does not like flying and I realize that I have placed the present tense here and see that he is alive for me and so many others, I hope) more to the other side of the Atlantic, he would maybe change his view…
A few pranks come to mind, one concerning him, when he received a letter that purported to have him called for military duty to Burma, then for Philip Larkin (who looks like he has been his best friend) there is a threat that he could be prosecuted for looking into some dirty magazines (there was no internet then and thus no widely available porn) and finally, Magister Kingsley moved one car from its place with some others, to make a joke on some people who had been quite nasty, plus the Nashville trip
Nashville was a period in the life of the mesmerizing author that he regrets, he thought he would join academia and people with reasonable views, only to find himself trapped in a vile, racist, inept society, with professors expressing the most disgusting attitudes towards African Americans (who were called with other, insulting terms then and there) and this has reminded me of my own experience working for AT&T, when they have treated me often with the most contemptible methods, if not a slave, then I have not been a respected employee either, what with the shameful wages, the calls for overwhelming activity, the request that I attend various shindigs (right, it is good to fly to Lisbon, Cairo, Madrid and other such places, but then you have to be able to afford it, both in terms of money spent and extracting yourself form your other duties, because the multinational treated you as an employee that gives 100 hours every week, but paid you as a contractor to avoid the pension, medical and any other costs on top of the fucking two hundred and fifty dollars they sent you, when they did not forget that)
The style, humor, depth of analysis, kindness, self-criticism are exemplary and then we have the added pleasure of meeting and finding some details about Elizabeth Bowen, Anthony Powell, Philip Larkin, Martin Amis and many other luminaries
10 out of 10
This could be the fifteenth opus written by this Magister Ludi that I have enjoyed and it is clear from that that I am an admirer, indeed, he is one of my three top favorite authors, the other two being Marcel Proust and Somerset Maugham.
The danger with reading these Memoirs (or other) would be that coming to know the author better, the reader might feel like distancing himself (herself or themselves) from the human being that has written this and other works and might be deterred from reading more by the same person, as may happen if you come across Intellectuals by Paul Johnson, wherefrom one gets a closer look at the lives of Leo Tolstoy, Ernest Hemingway, Henrik Ibsen, and especially Jean Jacques Rousseau – the latter left his children at the door at a time when nine out of ten kids in that situation would die – and finds the very dark side, one that repels http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/06/i...
Alhamdulillah, there is nothing outrageous in this autobiography and one does not end it with the feeling that one wants no more from the same source, on the contrary; however, what could happen is a sort of detachment from other figures that one admires, such as Evelyn Waugh – author of the tremendous, fabulous Brideshead Revisited and at least another phenomenal books
http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/11/b... - who appears in the Memoirs as less than enchanting: there is character that says Waugh was ‘a horrible little man, ingratiating himself with the powerful and the rich and very courteous and flattering while the person in question was a lady, and then totally ignoring her, once she has lost that title’, now whether we could believe this or not is another question, but the comments around a BBC interview suggest Waugh was rather difficult.
Another writer that I admire is Anthony Burgess, author of the dazzling, effervescent, magical A Clockwork Orange, about whose title we learn from the Memoirs that it could refer to something strange, in old tongue, and then Burgess explains that it could be related to the word that means man in Malay and thus we could interpret it as ‘Mechanical Man’, which is what the protagonist is turned into at some point http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/12/a...
Kingsley Amis is rather ironical or even cynical about the notion that someone is obsessed with language – keeping language in high esteem is fine – and thinks this name choosing takes the matter too far – well, words to that effect I hope – and then we find more about the relationship with Anthony Burgess, who has written reviews praising the works of Kingsley Amis, but the latter could not do the same in all honesty with the books of the former (not all of them anyway) so he avoided writing about some of them, until he reached the autobiography, in which he found some points to disagree with.
Thus, at their next meeting, Anthony Burgess came abruptly to the point (as always, Kingsley Amis is hilarious in rendering this and all other encounters, scenes, dialogues, well, everything) without so much as how are you, and says something like ‘I have always treated you well, lauded your books and you found little to say about my work’, and then end of conversation, but with the next book, Burgess returned to the same good review; we find from the wondrous, exhilarating Belles Lettres Papers http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/05/t... that Anthony Burgess was very nice on almost or all authors and their books…
Most writers, or those that I know of, admire, come out with their reputations untarnished, and even the aforementioned example, is just a case of Anthony Burgess being perhaps to kind to books that deserve more criticism and then expecting a similar treatment for some of his lesser output; one other Magister Ludi who is on my list of ten favorite luminaries is Anthony Powell or Tony, which is how Kingsley Amis refers to him, the one that gave humanity (Tony) the absolute chef d’oeuvre A Dance To The Music Of Time http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/07/a...
One issue w may have with reading these Memoirs, and for that matter, almost any book by Magister Kingsley, would be what it does to the fellow that wants to write and understands that he, she or they cannot reach this glorious level, and then the thought of what Demigod Amis would say about your production could be daunting, he is very clear on quite a few of those who are appreciated by the public, he dismisses most American writers, if not all, with the caveat that, were he to navigate (he does not like flying and I realize that I have placed the present tense here and see that he is alive for me and so many others, I hope) more to the other side of the Atlantic, he would maybe change his view…
A few pranks come to mind, one concerning him, when he received a letter that purported to have him called for military duty to Burma, then for Philip Larkin (who looks like he has been his best friend) there is a threat that he could be prosecuted for looking into some dirty magazines (there was no internet then and thus no widely available porn) and finally, Magister Kingsley moved one car from its place with some others, to make a joke on some people who had been quite nasty, plus the Nashville trip
Nashville was a period in the life of the mesmerizing author that he regrets, he thought he would join academia and people with reasonable views, only to find himself trapped in a vile, racist, inept society, with professors expressing the most disgusting attitudes towards African Americans (who were called with other, insulting terms then and there) and this has reminded me of my own experience working for AT&T, when they have treated me often with the most contemptible methods, if not a slave, then I have not been a respected employee either, what with the shameful wages, the calls for overwhelming activity, the request that I attend various shindigs (right, it is good to fly to Lisbon, Cairo, Madrid and other such places, but then you have to be able to afford it, both in terms of money spent and extracting yourself form your other duties, because the multinational treated you as an employee that gives 100 hours every week, but paid you as a contractor to avoid the pension, medical and any other costs on top of the fucking two hundred and fifty dollars they sent you, when they did not forget that)
The style, humor, depth of analysis, kindness, self-criticism are exemplary and then we have the added pleasure of meeting and finding some details about Elizabeth Bowen, Anthony Powell, Philip Larkin, Martin Amis and many other luminaries
April 10, 2013
Doesn't pull any punches at all. Some wonderful descriptions of the people he met (Terry-Thomas, who starred in the film version of Lucky Jim, Roald Dahl, who arrives in a helicopter to a party, the most miserably skinflinted author in the world... - you'll have to read the book to find out who).
April 24, 2025
“Memoirs” (1991) by Kingsley Amis offers a candid and witty glimpse into the life of one of Britain's most celebrated literary figures. Amis, known for his sharp humor and keen observations, brings readers along on a journey through his personal and professional experiences. Amis' narrative style is both entertaining and thought-provoking, offering insights into the world of literature, academia, and British society during his lifetime. Anyone interested in a lively and insightful journey through the life of a literary icon. His memoirs not only entertain but also provide a deeper understanding of the man behind the words. He lays out the framework of the book by saying, "To publish an account of my own intimate, domestic, sexual experiences would hurt a number of people who have emotional claims on me...and I have no desire to cause pain, or further pain, to them or myself.” He gets off to a great start, describing his father, who manufactures "unbreakable" glassware (if dropped on something besides a carpet, a plate or glass exploded like a hand grenade), and his paternal grandmother: "Mater was a large dreadful hairy-faced creature who lived to be nearly ninety and whom I loathed and feared...." Others he limns include Francis Bacon, Anthony Powell, Anthony Burgess, Roald Dahl, Malcolm Muggeridge, Margaret Thatcher, actor Terry-Thomas (a brilliant Bertrand in the film version of Lucky Jim, Amis's most famed novel), Lord Snowdon, Arnold Wesker, and many others. This results in an entertaining and informative read.
April 25, 2020
Amis' writings evoke decidedly mixed feelings in me. On the one hand, I cannot help but enjoy the literary craft and admire the author's ability to render complex emotions in accurate and economical, yet far from workmanlike, prose. But at the same time it is hard to understand the type of English personality Amis depicts (and represents) that is often unpleasant to be around, combining sneering disdain and callousness for other human beings. Still, one cannot help feel admiration for the writer's ability to capture such callousness in prose. All of which means I am drawn to Amis' writings with a kind of horrified fascination. His characters can be unpleasant but I will admit they expose something perhaps lurking in many people. For those who read Amis' most famous novel Lucky Jim and dismissed similar criticisms of the main character as mistakenly assuming the author was endorsing the character's personality, this memoir should stand as a corrective. Amis seems to be aware of his flaws; he surprisingly expresses warmth towards non-English peoples (Americans, Welsh) which he recognizes is generally absent among the English (I endorse that) thus belying an ideological nationalist type of bigotry. But does not succeed in moving beyond this lack of empathy in a more expansive way, even though it is obvious in several chapters – notably those about his travels to the US and his stay in Wales – that he expresses humanity and empathy. Of course while it would nice to see this personal growth in the memoir, it is perhaps not something we readers have the right to demand of an author, or of anyone, except ourselves.
January 12, 2019
Rambling and tedious at times, but when he is funny, the whole thing is worthwhile. Endlessly grateful for the essays about authors such as Elizabeth Taylor who haven't received much press. And how can I fail to quote his utterly, utterly bizarre comments regarding Thatcher: "But this is not an appropriate tone to go on about one of the best-looking women I had ever met for her age, then over fifty, remarkable. This quality is so extreme that, allied to her well-known photogenic quality, it can trap me for split seconds into thinking that I am looking at a science-fiction illustration of some time ago showing the beautiful girl who has become President of Solar Federation in the year 2220. The fact that it is not a sensual or sexy beauty does not make it a less sexual beauty, and that sexuality is still, I think, an underrated factor in her appeal (or repellence). Envy of it among women, consciousness of its unavailability among men, retains power even when advancing age should have disposed of it." It takes a special sort of Tory to say that.
March 10, 2024
“All Old English and nearly all Middle English works produced hatred and weariness in everybody who studied them. The former carried the redoubled impediment of having Tolkien, incoherent and often inaudible, lecturing on it.”
“First I thought Troilus and Criseyde was the most boring poem in English. Then I thought Beowulf was. Then I thought Paradise Lost was. Now I know that The Faerie Queene is the dullest thing out. Blast it. “
“And on first reading ‘Aubade’ I should have found a way of telling you that depression among the middle-aged and elderly is common in the early morning and activity disperses it, as you tell us in your last stanza, so if you feel as bad as you say then fucking get up, or if it’s too early or something then put the light on and read Dick Francis. ”
“Or Oxford. Anyone who, like myself, had been brought up there was likely to feel that Cambridge thought too much of Cambridge and about Cambridge.”
“First I thought Troilus and Criseyde was the most boring poem in English. Then I thought Beowulf was. Then I thought Paradise Lost was. Now I know that The Faerie Queene is the dullest thing out. Blast it. “
“And on first reading ‘Aubade’ I should have found a way of telling you that depression among the middle-aged and elderly is common in the early morning and activity disperses it, as you tell us in your last stanza, so if you feel as bad as you say then fucking get up, or if it’s too early or something then put the light on and read Dick Francis. ”
“Or Oxford. Anyone who, like myself, had been brought up there was likely to feel that Cambridge thought too much of Cambridge and about Cambridge.”
April 12, 2025
I enjoyed this. The author comes across as a bit of an arse – unapologetically so. At its best, the book delivers subtle, occasionally gossipy digs at contemporaries and boozy anecdotes that entertain, even if I wasn’t familiar with many of the figures mentioned.
That said, it can be quite stuffy and claustrophobic in a distinctly English way. Some of the observations about places like America come off as mean-spirited and not especially insightful.
The hospital ending felt rather self-indulgent – are we really meant to care about the author's hallucinations?
That said, it can be quite stuffy and claustrophobic in a distinctly English way. Some of the observations about places like America come off as mean-spirited and not especially insightful.
The hospital ending felt rather self-indulgent – are we really meant to care about the author's hallucinations?
February 18, 2024
Very funny Memoir. Outrageous when Kingsley reports his dreams about the Queen. Lots of set pieces, e.g. how his view on The Booker Prize changes when he wins it. Kingsley lived a Bohemian life and certainly enjoyed himself with a wide variety of people, but also suffered from various anxieties which are shared with courage and intimacy.
March 3, 2021
An easy going account of some of the characters that KA knew during his lifetime. Poets, authors, alcoholics, snobs, and a few bigots. The chapter on booze is surprisingly short however for such a renowned imbiber but he makes up for it elsewhere. Enjoyable and recommended.
January 5, 2022
Lost interest after a while. It's reflective and meandering.
November 29, 2023
Interesting..at times some brilliant observations and commentary abound. Enough to make this required reading (instead of one of his novels)...probably not.
December 23, 2016
Pleasant enough with plenty of anecdotes.Episodic and largely about famous people he knows,which may not be known to many today.Interesting about his early years but not very revealing - are memoirs ever?
December 23, 2014
This is a nicely written unvarnished autobiography in which he is unafraid about showing himself in an honest light.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews