Shows
The Amis PapersEp28 S2E6 One Fat Englishman 1963The adventures, mainly amorous, of Roger Micheldene, soaked in sin, fat, rude, and angry, in suburban America, as he tries to persuade Helene Bangs to leave her husband for him. Many readers mistake the target for the satire: it is Micheldene and the society that produced him that Amis is critiquing, although he does share some of his prejudices (especially about literature). The discussion muses on the improbable social and sexual success of Micheldene despite his lack of redeeming behaviour, parallels with the author's own life, and Amis's atheism and attitude to Christianity.Content note: quotations with the f...
2025-12-2946 minThe Amis PapersEp27 S2E5 Take A Girl Like You (1960)Kingsley Amis's longest, and some say his best, novel, recounts the tortuous relationship of innocent Jenny Bunn and lascivious Patrick Standish as they negotiate societal mores and personal boundaries in a pre-Pill world. In this episode I explore the source and meaning of the epigraph "Go, gentle maid, go lead the apes in hell", whether the book can be read as an indictment of the male gaze, what the old website Hot Or Not tells us about Pretty Privilege, what Amis means when a character says that they are too busy trying to not be a nasty man to worry a...
2025-12-1754 minThe Amis PapersEp26 S2E4 I Like It Here (1958)Amis complains about going abroad and foreigners (and expats) while his main ire is aimed at the literature tradition of English writers imbuing Mediterranean cultures with a deep understanding inaccessible to those without the means to travel. Amis's least favourite novel, based largely on his own experiences when the family spent 3 months in Portugal as a conidtion of Lucky Jim winning the Somerset Maugham first novel prize. His satire is aimed at a style of writing that doesn't really exist any more, leaving the pleasures of the book fleeting and inconsequential.
2025-12-0238 minThe Amis PapersEp25 That Uncertain Feeling (1956)The tale of 'Unlucky John', trapped in an unsatisfying job and home life in Swansea, offered an escape route through an affair with a bored wife and her hard-partying friends. In this episode I discuss the parallels with Amis's own life, whether anxiety about mortality is a plausible excuse for infidelity, and why farce requires sympathy with the protagonist to be funny. Language note: I include a quote from the book that uses the term 'faggot' - this isn't used as a gay slur.
2025-11-2340 minThe Amis PapersS2Ep2 Lucky Jim (1954)A detailed look at Kingsley Amis’s first published novel, covering the role of luck, whether as an Angry Young Man he wants systematic change or just a better place for himself, and the characteristic KA internal monologue reflecting moral ambiguity and confusion as a new form of expression. Also discussed are the song from which the title derives, the long shadow of military service, whether relationships at the time included sex, a comparison of Christine with Rachel in The Rachel Papers, and whether Amis’s view of universities and the value of research are consistent or well-founded. Content...
2025-11-121h 12The Amis PapersS2E1 Kingsley Amis intro and biographyMoving onto the work of Kingsley Amis, some recommendations on where to start (Lucky Jim and The Old Devils), a discussion of his biography and political development, and the value of his work as a social history of the 50s-70s.Books mentioned:Zachary Leader The Life of Kingsley AmisThe Letters of Kingsley Amis
2025-10-2926 minThe Amis PapersEp22 The Rub of Time and final thoughtsMartin Amis's final collected journalism volume has its interesting moments, including a tempering of his love of Nabokov, doubts about Jeremy Corbyn, and thoughts on Larkin and Germany, which I contrast with Barbara Pym's as described in Paule Byrne's biography The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym . In this episode I also look back on the novels as whole, including a discussion of Shifts by Christopher Meredith and how its portrayal of working class characters compares with Amis, Amis's ways of ending his books, and the recurrent device of playing with the status of the text to create more di...
2025-10-211h 01The Amis PapersEp21 Inside Story (2020)We reach Amis's last book, an exercise in autofiction that combines autobiography, a discussion of Philip Larkin's politics and love life, moving accounts of the deaths of Christopher Hitchens and Saul Bellow, and a fictitious years-long frustrating affair with Phoebe Phelps. If that sounds like a mess then you're not wrong, but there are some very good bits. I explore his advice to writers which seems to boil down to "don't write like me", and also reflect on his comments on his early novels, in particular The Rachel Papers, which turns out to be much less fictional than it...
2025-08-031h 14The Amis PapersEp20 The Zone of Interest (2015)Amis's contribution to the Careers Fair of Auschwitz stays mainly with the guards, exploring the lives and morals of those engaged in delivering the Final Solution. I discuss why Shakespeare and Auden seem out of place, and Amis's view of the significance of 1942. Jenny Frazer The fictionalising of Auschwitz The Tobolowsky Files episode 34: a good day in Auschwitz
2025-06-2149 minThe Amis PapersEp 19 Lionel Asbo (2012)Another attempt at a state-of-the-nation comic novel, but this time feeling detached, as if Amis is no longer up to date with British society. In this discussion I refer to "Who let the dogs out?" by the Baha Men, Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies (1930), whether Mean Mr Mustard makes sense as an 80s nickname, and Lionel Blair's cultural footprint. Amis is groping towards a point about nature and nurture and whether it is possible to escape the criminal underclass, but this is thin gruel.Also mentioned: The Martin Chronicles podcast
2025-05-271h 02The Amis PapersEp18 Pregnant Widow (2010)A long hot summer in Italy - it's 1970 and Keith Nearing is 20, working his way through the canon and thinking about sex with his companions. A sprawling novel about the reconfiguration of social mores in the aftermath of the sexual revolution - not for nothing does it start with Larkin's Annus Mirabilis. In this discussion I highlight Katha Politt's criticisms of the depiction of female characters, the slightly uncertain period detail, parallels to Adrian Mole, Lucky Jim and Jenny Bunn from Take a Girl Like You (1960), and end by exploring whether Amis was right to complain about critics seeing it as...
2025-04-291h 16The Amis PapersEp17 House of MeetingsAmis's short Russian novel takes us through history from Stalinism to Putin's failed state, while following a lifelong love triangle between two brothers and Zoya. Content note: the book and the podcast include descriptions of sexual assault and reference self harm. I mention Adam Curtis's Russia 1985-1999: Trauma Zone (available in the UK on BBC iPlayer) and Kingsley Amis's novel Jake's Thing as a book that is enjoyable to read.I spend some time trying to tease out Amis's moral point, that a person, people or nation without conscience cannot survive, but am uneasy with its application to the...
2025-04-041h 04The Amis PapersEp15a Heavy Water updated version(updated file with the actual episode included)Amis's second short story collection is diverse in subject, style and antiquity - including a science fiction story that reveals that Earth is unimportant and doomed, a fantasy where poets make big money film deals and screenwriters starve, and a commentary on the way that society has left the old rules of status and masculinity behind, featuring Big Mal Bale who reappears in Yellow Dog. There are short funny stories too.Mentioned in this episode:Extract from Experience (2000)Another review of the boo...
2025-01-3044 minThe Amis PapersEp16 Yellow Dog (2003)The publication of Yellow Dog was greeted with dismay by the papers, writers and fans. "Embarrassingly bad" was the memorable description by novelist Tibor Fischer. Tibor Fischer review Parts are aggressively unpleasant- the tedious brutality of old-style London gangsters, the extravagant cynicism and hypocrisy of the tabloid journalists, and the grimy business of the pornography industry, but looked at in the right light it is a comprehensive and nuanced exploration of masculinity in the late 20th century, arguing that we must outgrow our instincts to create a society for all. On the way I discuss 90s ladd...
2025-01-291h 05The Amis PapersEp15 Heavy Water and other stories (1998)Amis's second short story collection is diverse in subject, style and antiquity - including a science fiction story that reveals that Earth is unimportant and doomed, a fantasy where poets make big money film deals and screenwriters starve, and a commentary on the way that society has left the old rules of status and masculinity behind, featuring Big Mal Bale who reappears in Yellow Dog. There are short funny stories too.Mentioned in this episode:Extract from Experience (2000)Another review of the book Another reviewContemporary reviews ...
2025-01-0200 minThe Amis PapersEp14 Out of Blue (film based on Night Train)Carol Morley's 2018 film adaptation of Night Train places the action in New Orleans. The podcast discusses how the book's mystery has been altered to make it more of a conventional noir, why it was filmed in 'Covid style' with empty rooms and few people, and why the viewer may find the ending unsatisfying. Worth watching if you like the book; there is a spolier section at the end of the episode in case you plan to do so.
2024-11-1817 minThe Amis PapersEp13 Night TrainWe jump across the Atlantic to a modern noir, with a disillusioned alcoholic cop investigating the death of her beautiful and successful friend. A comic novel light on jokes, with an emphasis on the meaninglessness of existence and the impossibility of happiness. The podcast ponders whether a work that shows the police as bigoted, lawless and incompetent counts as "copaganda", where the phrase "the sense of an ending" comes from and what it means, and whether the ending is as bleak as it seems.Content note: discussion of suicide and child sexual abuse.
2024-11-1138 minThe Amis PapersEp12 The Information (1995)We reach the halfway point of Amis's fiction, a long meditation on the realities of the writer's life and the futility of revenge. Some poetic allusions to Philip Larkin's The Trees and Wendy Cope's Tumps (typically useless male poets), and the mystery of what a planesaw is, enliven Amis writing at the top of his game on the sad and depressing life of Richard Tull, a novelist whose early promise has evaporated into hackwork.
2024-10-161h 12The Amis PapersEp11 Time's Arrow (1991)Amis follows a Nazi doctor from his death as a respectable suburban physician in America back through New York to Portugal, Rome, and wartime Germany. On the way we discover the strangeness of eating and relationships told backwards, the significance of 1960, and whether those guilty of monstrous crimes are monsters or ordinary people.Diane LeBlond 2013 Etudes britanniques contemporaines “Martin Amis and ‘theNature of the Offence’: from Expressions of Outrage to the Experience of Scandal”
2024-08-0637 minThe Amis PapersEp10 London Fields (1989)Content note: the novel raises issues of sexual violence, domestic violence, child abuse, child sexual exploitation and disordered eating.Looking at Amis' London novel, or his darts novel, or his millenial novel (in the end-of-the-world sense not the avocado-toast-and-can't-buy-a-house sense). And the 2018 film based on it. On the way I discuss the strange parochialism of the metropolitan writer, how many levels of unreliable narration are present, and whether Amis hates the working class or just happens to write about its worst examples.I also mention:Roger Lewis The Life and Death of Peter Sellers,Susie Thoma...
2024-07-151h 15The Amis PapersEp9 Einstein's Monsters (1987)This episode discusses Amis's first short story collection, loosely themed on nuclear war and its aftermath, and concludes that the stories are unsatisfying. On the way I discuss what Amis might learn from Scooby Doo about narrative, the art of the literary backhanded compliment, and whether the Nuclear Age presents different challenges to the Age of Anxiety.There is a brief mention of schizophrenia and suicide.
2024-05-2735 minThe Amis PapersEp8 Money (1984)A detailed discussion of one of Amis's best books, exploring the strange appeal of John Self, what it is that the character Martin Amis takes from him as reward for winning a game of chess, and why Self's limited reading includes the obscure Shakespeare play Timon of Athens. The podcast covers the novel's treatment of themes including suicide and physical and sexual violence.BBC interview 1984 with dramatisation featuring Mel Smith as Self The Guardian 100 best novels: MoneyFacebook page for the podcast
2024-04-301h 21The Amis PapersAmis Papers 7 Saturn 3 (1980)A look at the science fiction Garden of Eden/ Frankenstein/ mad robot film Saturn 3 for which Amis wrote a screenplay, although nothing in the finished script bears much evidence of his style. It's chief interest is as raw material for the novel Money.Something is wrong on Saturn 3 websiteIndustry Podcast episode on John BarryWe Hate Movies podcast episode 127: Blame It On Rio
2024-03-0521 minThe Amis PapersEp 6 Films - Rachel Papers and Dead BabiesA look at some of the film versions of Amis's books as a prelude to Saturn 3: Rachel papers (1989) and Dead Babies (Mood Swingers) (2000) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAJqCZQ2Yrs ,
2024-02-0511 minThe Amis PapersEp5 Other PeopleIs Other People more of a mystery than the author intended? I present the evidence that Mary is dead, is in hell, or is in a life loop with a chance of redemption. Plus Amis's further thoughts on literature and life, and the emergence of the mature Amis style.Facebook pageBooks that matter review of Other People"Narrative and Narrated Homicide in Martin Amis's Other People and London Fields," from Critique 37 (1995). By Brian Finney, California State University, Long Beach.In Camera (No Exit) 1964Craig Raine “A Ma...
2023-11-3055 minThe Amis PapersAmis Papers Ep4 SuccessThis episode discussed Success, a tale of two brothers and sister trying to adapt to the adult world, by way of unreliable narration, urban landscapes, childhood trauma and attempted hedonism. Links are made to the world of work as described in Joseph Heller Something Happened , and textual parallels to TS Eliot The Wasteland and Philip Larkin ‘Going’, ‘High Windows’, and ‘This be the Verse’. https://www.facebook.com/AmisPapers https://martinamisweb.com/discussion.shtml https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/an-amis-who-lives-in-his-own-world-1620442.html https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-age-of-acceleration-an-interview-with-martin-amis/ https...
2023-11-1350 minThe Amis PapersAmis Papers Ep3 Dead Babies (1975)This episode explores Amis' second novel Dead Babies, an account of a drug- and sex-fuelled weekend at an Oxfordshire rectory which conceals a serious moral purpose. The podcast considers what the title means, why Quentin's reading helps explain the book's thesis, what Menippus has to tell us about the aftermath of free love, unexpected links to Philip Larkin, and a surprising postcript on the origin of the term 'blinkie'. Also mentioned is the podcast The Martin Chronicles and the research of Joanna Stolarek.
2023-10-271h 00The Amis PapersAmis Papers Ep2 RachelThis episode looks at The Rachel Papers (1973) and explores what Charles Highway's tragic flaw is, what the Rachel papers are, and why Charles admires Norman so much. Contains some explicit language from the book.
2023-09-011h 00The Amis PapersAmis Papers 1 IntroductionThis episode provides some context: a brief biography of Amis, my experience as a fan since the 1980s seeing his reputation rise and fall, and a reader's guide for those new to his work suggesting which to read first and which to avoid.
2023-08-2445 min
Tiny In All That AirLarkin's 99th Birthday special (part 2)The Society is looking forward to the Centenary celebrations next year, but we wanted to mark what would have been Larkin's 99th birthday this year by reading his poems. The readings have been recorded and submitted by PLS society members, trustees, honorary vice presidents and podcast listeners from across the world. Larkin was famously reluctant to read his poems in public, but we hope listeners enjoy hearing his words being read out loud. Please raise a glass and join us with our birthday celebrations! This is the second of two parts.
Poems and readers featured as follows.
2021-08-1654 min