The Booker Prize, formerly the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a prestigious literary award conferred each year for the best single work of sustained fiction written in the English language, which was published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. The winner of the Booker Prize receives £50,000, as well as international publicity that usually leads to a significant sales boost. When the prize was created, only novels written by Commonwealth, Irish, and South African citizens were eligible to receive the prize; in 2014, eligibility was widened to any English-language novel—a change that proved controversial.
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.
Terence Francis Eagleton is an English philosopher, literary theorist, critic, and public intellectual. He is currently Distinguished Professor of English Literature at Lancaster University.
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.
That Uncertain Feeling is a comic novel by Kingsley Amis, first published in 1955.
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.
Money: A Suicide Note is a 1984 novel by Martin Amis. In 2005, Time included the novel in its "100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present". The novel is based on Amis's experience as a script writer on the feature film Saturn 3, a Kirk Douglas vehicle. The novel was dramatised by the BBC in 2010.
How late it was, how late is a 1994 stream-of-consciousness novel written by Scottish writer James Kelman. The Glasgow-centred work is written in a working-class Scottish dialect, and follows Sammy, a shoplifter and ex-convict.
John Edward Stride was an English actor best known for his television work in the 1970s.
Dylan Marlais Thomas (1914–1953) was a Welsh poet and writer who — along with his work — has been remembered and referred to by a number of artists in various media.
David Alan Nicholls is a British novelist and screenwriter. Initially an actor after graduating college, he became a screenwriter, notably creating Rescue Me and adaptations of novels, plays, and memoirs. He is the writer of six novels.
Devil May Care is a James Bond continuation novel written by Sebastian Faulks. It was published in the UK by Penguin Books on 28 May 2008, the 100th anniversary of the birth of Ian Fleming, the creator of Bond. The story centers on Bond's investigation into Dr. Julius Gorner, a megalomaniac chemist with a deep-seated hatred of England.
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."
Throughout the life of the poet Philip Larkin, multiple women had important roles which were significant influences on his poetry. Since Larkin's death in 1985, biographers have highlighted the importance of female relationships on Larkin: when Andrew Motion's biography was serialised in The Independent in 1993, the second installment of extracts was dedicated to the topic. In 1999, Ben Brown's play Larkin with Women dramatised Larkin's relationships with three of his lovers, and more recently writers such as Martin Amis, continued to comment on this subject.
Lemmons, also known as Gladsmuir and Gladsmuir House, was the home of novelists Kingsley Amis (1922–1995) and Elizabeth Jane Howard (1923–2014) on the south side of Hadley Common, Barnet, on the border of north London and Hertfordshire.
Richard Owain Roberts is a Welsh author. He is the author of the novel Hello Friend We Missed You, which has been hailed as "a turning point for Welsh fiction", and the short story collection All The Places We Lived.
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.
Hilary Kilmarnock, Lady Kilmarnock, known as Hilly, was the first wife of Kingsley Amis and the mother of Martin Amis. When her third husband, Alistair Boyd, became Chief of Clan Boyd and 7th Baron Kilmarnock, she became Lady Kilmarnock.
