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JOHN GIELGUD
Actor
Talking about playing the classics, including Hamlet
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JUDI DENCH
Actor
Reflects on childhood and deciding to be an actress |
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Martin Amis b1949
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Born in Swansea, the son of novelist Sir Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis was educated at Exeter College, Oxford. After graduation in 1971 he worked as a book reviewer on The Observer and later as fiction and poetry editor at The Times Literary Supplement. From there he went to the New Statesman, where he became literary editor in 1977. Amis had already had 3 novels published by the time he resigned from the New Statesman in 1980 to write full time. The Rachel Papers was published in 1973, winning the Somerset Maugham Award in 1974. This was followed by Dead Babies in 1976 and Success in 1978. At the same time, Amis produced a quantity of essays, reviews and articles that established his reputation as one of the wittiest writers of the time. Later novels include Other People: A Mystery Story (1981), Money: A Suicide Note (1984), Einstein's Monsters (1987), London Fields (1989) and Time's Arrow (1991).
Many critics consider Money to be his best book, but London Fields is probably the most compulsively readable. Less well received was The Information (1995), a story of literary rivalry and mid-life crisis. Night Train, published in 1997, was condemned by John Updike for its "post-human quality". In 2000, Amis turned his hand to memoir-writing with Experience. Amis' ornate, satirical style is instantly recognisable and much imitated. Critics have noted what his father has condemned as a "terrible compulsive vividness... [a] constant demonstrating of his command of English". To some reviewers, his work is shallow and gratuitously unpleasant, yet to others he is a comic genius comparable to Charles Dickens.
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KEY WORKS INCLUDE:
Success (1978)
Money (1984)
London Fields(1989)
Experience (2000)
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