Charm and hubris

I bought your book today; I bought your daddy's book too," a friend told Martin Amis when his novel Money was published in 1984, at the same time as his father Kingsley's Stanley and the Women. Kingsley was thrilled, writing to his old friend Philip Larkin, "That sentence will only get said once in the history of the world."

 

This anecdote illustrates the charm and hubris of this father-son literary dynasty, so strong an influence on the world of English letters since the 1950s. It occurs near the end of this new biography of the two men by Neil Powell, a well-known poet, essayist and author.

Famous as the Amises are, we must ask