Amis, Kingsley – The Bell Bookshop

Collected Poems

Emma — Thu, 07 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

‘One of the very best of our poets’ Anthony Powell

Kingsley Amis wrote poems throughout his life, turning his acerbic, bracing perceptiveness on the same subjects that fill his novels: lust, lost love, drink, money, God (seen as indifferent or malign), and old age. Collected Poems, arranged chronologically, shows the full range of his sparkling verse, by turns scabrous and melancholy, satirical and playful.

‘Scathingly funny … bawdy and tragic, unflinching and unapologetic, culpable and morally acute … Amis’s poems rush headlong into the messiness of life’ New Criterion

‘A contender for the title of the most accomplished and least self-satisfied poet of his generation’ Clive James

The Amis Collection

Emma — Thu, 07 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

‘Amis has no faults. He is clever, witty, ironical’ Guardian

What advice can one give a green young author? What purpose do literary prizes serve? Where on earth can a man get a decent bite to eat? This entertaining collection is vintage Kingsley Amis, revealing him at his most robust and incisive, cutting a swathe through such subjects as writers and writing, ‘Abroad’, eating and drinking, music, language and education. He turns a clear and critical eye on Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Powell, Anthony Burgess, Ian Fleming and Philip Larkin, and does not spare their potential readers in ‘Sod the Public: A Consumer’s Guide’. In typically razor-sharp, wicked and witty prose, Amis tackles the culture and conceits of his era.

Everyday Drinking

Emma — Thu, 14 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

“Kingsley Amis’s drink writing is better than anybody else’s, ever…” EsquireKingsley Amis was one of the great masters of comic prose, and no subject was dearer to him than the art and practice of imbibing.Everyday Drinking brings together the best of his writing on the subject: Kingsley Amis in Drink, Everyday Drinking and How’s Your Glass? In one handsome package, the book covers a full shelf of the master’s riotous and erudite thoughts on the drinking arts; along with a series of well-tested recipes (including a cocktail called the Lucky Jim) are Amis’s musings on The Hangover, The Boozing Man’s Diet, The Mean Sod’s Guide, and (presumably as a matter of speculation) How Not to Get Drunk – all leavened with fun quizzes on the making and drinking of alcohol all over the world.Mixing practical know-how and hilarious opinionation, this is a delightful cocktail of wry humour and distilled knowledge, served by one of our great gimlet wits.With an introduction by Christopher Hitchens.

I Want It Now

Emma — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

The quickest way to get rich is to marry someone rich, but how do you do this if you aren’t yet rich? TV chat-show host Ronnie Appleyard is preoccupied with this question as he pursues wealthy heiress Simona Quick over two continents in the company of braying aristocrats, Greek shipping magnates, American dandies and the dreaded mother-in-law to be. But as he comes closer to his prize other questions present themselves. Is the androgenous Simona really worth it? Why doesn’t she like sex? Is it possible to drink all day? With his unerring eye for absurdity and class satire Kingsley Amis shows us what happens when money meets naked ambition.

Vintage Classics Green Man

Emma — Thu, 01 Jul 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Like all good coaching inns, The Green Man is said to boast a resident ghost: Dr Thomas Underhill, a notorious seventeenth-century practitioner of black arts and sexual deviancy. However, the landlord, Maurice Allington, is the sole witness to the renaissance of the malevolent Underhill. Led by an anxious desire to vindicate his sanity, Allington strives to uncover the key to Underhill’s satanic powers. All while the skeletons in Allington’s own cupboard rattle to get out.

PMC Lucky Jim

Emma — Thu, 25 May 2000 00:00:00 +0000

‘A brilliantly and preposterously funny book’ Guardian

‘A flawless comic novel … I loved it then, as I do now. It has always made me laugh out loud’ Helen Dunmore, The Times

Jim Dixon has accidentally fallen into a job at one of Britain’s new red brick universities. A moderately successful future in the History Department beckons – as long as Jim can stave off the unwelcome advances of fellow lecturer Margaret, survive a madrigal-singing weekend at Professor Welch’s, deliver a lecture on ‘Merrie England’ and resist Christine, the hopelessly desirable girlfriend of Welch’s awful son Bertrand. Inspired by Amis’s friend, the poet Philip Larkin, Jim Dixon is a timeless comic character, adrift in a hopelessly gauche and pretentious world, in a witty campus novel that skewers the hypocrisies and vanities of 1950s academic life.

With an introduction by David Lodge