Experience (Martin Amis) very moved. What seems at first just gossip and guestlists - sprays of names offered without explanation, diaristic footnotes, a refusal to universalise - soon becomes a kind of tender defiance, as if Amis wanted the book to vibrate with an atmosphere of wounded privacy." Terence Baker, in "The Sunday Times", called it a "careful, heartfelt tribute." Jackie Wullschlager, wrote in the "Financial Times", "The core here is family, and it is movingly, beautifully, evoked... The raw materials – neurotic, outrageous genius of a father; gorgeous earth-mother Hilly; sophisticated step-mother Elizabeth Jane Howard; stunning girlfriends dropped along the way like
The Letters of Kingsley Amis Lodge called the "Letters" "a major literary event" and the critic John Carey proclaimed Leader's editing of the letters to be "omniscient". The Letters of Kingsley Amis The Letters of Kingsley Amis (2001) was assembled and edited by the American literary critic Zachary Leader. It is a collection of more than 800 letters from Amis to many different friends and professional acquaintances from 1941 until shortly before his death in 1995. About one quarter of the letters selected were addressed to Amis's close friend, the poet Philip Larkin. The other recipients of letters included in the book include: The publication