Sir Kingsley William Amis was an English novelist, poet, critic and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, short stories, radio and television scripts, and works of social and literary criticism. He is best known for satirical comedies such as Lucky Jim (1954), One Fat Englishman (1963), Ending Up (1974), Jake's Thing (1978) and The Old Devils (1986).
Sir Martin Louis Amis was an English novelist, essayist, memoirist, screenwriter and critic. He is best known for his novels Money (1984) and London Fields (1989). He received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his memoir Experience and was twice listed for the Booker Prize. Amis was a professor of creative writing at the University of Manchester's Centre for New Writing from 2007 until 2011. In 2008, The Times named him one of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.
Sir Ben Kingsley is an English actor. He has received accolades throughout his career spanning five decades, including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a Grammy Award, and two Golden Globe Awards as well as nominations for four Primetime Emmy Awards and two Laurence Olivier Awards. Kingsley was appointed Knight Bachelor in 2002 for services to the British film industry. He was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2010 and received the Britannia Award in 2013.
John Gerard Braine was an English novelist. Braine is usually listed among the angry young men, a loosely defined group of English writers who emerged on the literary scene in the 1950s.
Lucky Jim is a novel by Kingsley Amis, first published in 1954 by Victor Gollancz. It was Amis's first novel and won the 1955 Somerset Maugham Award for fiction. The novel follows the academic and romantic tribulations of the eponymous James (Jim) Dixon, a reluctant history lecturer at an unnamed provincial English university.
The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare is a 1908 novel by G. K. Chesterton. The book has been described as a metaphysical thriller.
Robert Markham is a pseudonym used by author Kingsley Amis to publish Colonel Sun in March 1968. The book was the first continuation James Bond novel following the death of Bond's creator, Ian Fleming.
Sebastian Charles Faulks is a British novelist, journalist and broadcaster. He is best known for his historical novels set in France – The Girl at the Lion d'Or, Birdsong and Charlotte Gray.
Colonel Sun is a novel by Kingsley Amis published by Jonathan Cape on 28 March 1968 under the pseudonym "Robert Markham". Colonel Sun is the first James Bond continuation novel published after Ian Fleming's 1964 death. Before writing the novel, Amis wrote two other Bond related works, the literary study The James Bond Dossier and the humorous The Book of Bond. Colonel Sun centres on the fictional British Secret Service operative James Bond and his mission to track down the kidnappers of M, his superior at the Secret Service. During the mission he discovers a communist Chinese plot to cause an international incident. Bond, assisted by a Greek spy working for the Russians, finds M on a small Aegean island, rescues him and kills the two main plotters: Colonel Sun Liang-tan and a former Nazi commander, Von Richter.
The Diamond Smugglers is a non-fiction work by Ian Fleming that was first published in 1957 in the United Kingdom and in 1958 in the United States. The book is based on two weeks of interviews Fleming undertook with John Collard, a member of the International Diamond Security Organisation (IDSO), which was headed by Sir Percy Sillitoe, the ex-chief of MI5 who worked for the diamond company De Beers.
Elizabeth Jane Howard, was an English novelist. She wrote 12 novels including the best-selling series TheCazalet Chronicle.
The James Bond Dossier (1965), by Kingsley Amis, is a critical analysis of the James Bond novels. Amis dedicated the book to friend and background collaborator, the poet and historian Robert Conquest. Later, after Ian Fleming's death, Amis was commissioned as the first continuation novelist for the James Bond novel series, writing Colonel Sun (1968) under the pseudonym Robert Markham. The James Bond Dossier was the first, formal, literary study of the James Bond character. More recent studies of Fleming's secret agent and his world include The Politics of James Bond: From Fleming's Novels to the Big Screen (2001), by the historian Jeremy Black.
Sidney Kingsley was an American dramatist. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Men in White in 1934.
Only Two Can Play is a 1962 British comedy film directed by Sidney Gilliat starring Peter Sellers, Mai Zetterling and Virginia Maskell. The screenplay was by Bryan Forbes, based on the 1955 novel That Uncertain Feeling by Kingsley Amis.
Take a Girl Like You is a 1970 British romantic comedy drama film directed by Jonathan Miller and starring Hayley Mills, Oliver Reed and Noel Harrison. Based on the 1960 novel Take a Girl Like You by Kingsley Amis, it was adapted by George Melly.
The Pregnant Widow is a novel by the English writer Martin Amis, published by Jonathan Cape on 4 February 2010. Its theme is the feminist revolution, which Amis sees as incomplete and bewildering for women, echoing the view of the 19th-century Russian writer, Alexander Herzen, that revolution is "a long night of chaos and desolation". The "pregnant widow", a phrase taken from Herzen's From the other shore (1848–1850), is the point at which the old order has given way, the new one not yet born. Amis said in 2007 that "consciousness is not revolutionised by the snap of a finger. And feminism, I reckon, is about halfway through its second trimester."
Lucky Jim is a 1957 British comedy film directed by John Boulting and starring Ian Carmichael, Terry-Thomas and Hugh Griffith. It is an adaptation of the 1954 novel Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis.
The Anti-Death League is a 1966 novel by English author Kingsley Amis (1922–1995). Set in England, it follows the lives of characters working in and around a fictional British Army camp where a secret weapon is being tested.
The Folks That Live on the Hill is Kingsley Amis's twentieth novel, published in 1990.
The Russian Girl is a 1992 comedy novel by Kingsley Amis published by Hutchinson & Co.
