Kingsley Amis was one of a trio of brilliant comic novelists who made English literature sparkle in the twentieth century.

Kingsley Amis was one of a trio of brilliant comic novelists who made English literature sparkle in the twentieth century.

The people who say: 'You are what you eat' have always seemed addled to me. In my opinion, you are what you think, and if you don't think, you can eat all the meat in Kansas City and still be nothing but a vegetable.

The biographer's problem is that he never knows enough. The autobiographer's problem is that he knows too much.

It takes great self-confidence to write a newspaper column. Some might say it takes arrogance. Be that as it may, my willingness to pronounce on a great many matters of which I have little or no knowledge is one of my prime qualifications for this trade.

So there he is at last. Man on the moon. The poor magnificent bungler! He can't even get to the office without undergoing the agonies of the damned, but give him a little metal, a few chemicals, some wire and twenty or thirty billion dollars and vroom! there he is, up on a rock a quarter of a million miles up in the sky.

A day spent praising the earth and lamenting man's pollutionist history makes you feel like a superior, sensitive soul.