Showing results by author "Kingsley Amis" in All Categories

Malcolm, Peter and Charlie and their Soave-sodden wives have one main ambition left in life: to drink Wales dry. But their routine is both shaken and stirred when they are joined by professional Welshman Alun Weaver (CBE) and his wife, Rhiannon.

Brought to you by Penguin. 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 survive a madrigal-singing weekend at Professor Welch's, deliver a lecture on 'Merrie...

The life of secret agent James Bond has begun to fall into a pattern that threatens complacency…until the sunny afternoon when M is kidnapped. The action ricochets across the globe to a volcanic Greek island, where Colonel Sun Liang-tan of the People's Liberation Army of China collaborates with an ex-Nazi atrocity expert in a world-menacing conspiracy. Stripped of all professional aids, Bond faces, unarmed, the monstrous devices of Colonel Sun....

Brought to you by Penguin. Douglas Yandell, a young-ish music critic, is enlisted by Kitty Vandervane to keep an eye on her roving husband - the eminent conductor and would-be radical Sir Roy - as he embarks on yet another affair. Roy, meanwhile, wants Douglas as an alibi for his growing...

Brought to you by Penguin. For the first time in audio, savour this volume bringing together the best of his three out-of-print works on the art of and, most importantly, practice of drinking. Including Kingsley Amis in Drink, Everyday Drinking and How's Your Glass?, this collection celebrates...

Brought to you by Penguin. In this surreal comedy of soldiers and spies, Lieutenant James Churchill and his colleagues find themselves questioning their purpose. Are they for death or against it? These men of action will travel between the barracks, the lunatic asylum and the house of an...

Elegant, provocative and hugely entertaining, Kingsley Amis's memoirs are filled with anecdotes, experiences and portraits of famous friends, family, acquaintances (and a few eminent foes). From his childhood days to Oxford and army life, his travels abroad and his years as a successful novelist, Memoirs offers extraordinary insights into a unique literary life.

Like all good coaching inns, The Green Man is said to boast a resident ghost: Dr Thomas Underhill, a notorious 17th-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.

Brought to you by Penguin. The King's English is Kingsley Amis's authoritative and witty guide to the use and abuse of the English language. A scourge of illiteracy and a thorn in the side of pretension, Amis provides indispensable advice about the linguistic blunders and barbarities that lie in...

Brought to you by Penguin. Harry Caldecote is the most charming man you'll ever meet, a convivial academic who devotes his life to others. He is on call when his alcoholic niece falls into strange hands, when his brother threatens to emulate Wordsworth, when his son's lesbian lodger is beaten up...

Brought to you by Penguin. In this hilarious, inspiring and provocative series of essays, Kingsley Amis introduces every reader to the wonders and value of science fiction writing. From the extraordinary ideas but sexless science of Jules Verne to the power of H. G. Wells's terrifying...

Brought to you by Penguin. A mummy is stolen from a small town museum along with some Roman coins and a soaking wet man collapses in fourteen year old Peter Furneaux's living room bleeding from the head. What was a suspected student prank is followed by murder. At first it is impossible to see...

Brought to you by Penguin. Brimming with gluttony, booze and lust, Roger Micheldene is loose in America. Supposedly visiting Budweiser University to make deals for his publishing firm in England, Roger instead sets out to offend all he meets and to seduce every woman he encounters. But his...

Hubert Anvil is a 10-year-old boy blessed with the voice of an angel. The Church hierarchy decrees that Hubert should be turned into a castrato - an alteration that could bring Hubert fame and fortune, but would also cut him off from an adult world he is curious to discover. In a dystopian world where Martin Luther never reformed and where the Holy Office's power is absolute, where will Hubert turn if he decides to defy their wishes?

Brought to you by Penguin. The short stories of Kingsley Amis - the great master of post-war comic prose - are dark, playful, moving, surprising and extremely funny. This definitive collection gathers all Amis's short fiction in a single volume for the first time and encompasses five decades of...

Brought to you by Penguin. Competition is stiff for the position of sub-librarian in Aberdarcy Library. For John Lewis, the situation is complicated by the attentions of daunting and desirable village socialite, Elizabeth Gruffyd-Williams, who is married to a member of the local Council...

Novelist, poet and critic Kingsley Amis was one of Britain’s greatest postwar writers. A master of comic fiction, he came to fame in 1954, and won the 1986 Booker Prize for The Old Devils. Included in this collection are dramatisations of seven of his short stories and two novels, all imbued with his characteristic wit and social satire. These are complemented by readings of selected correspondence and an interview with Amis himself.

Brought to you by Penguin. Twenty year old Jenny Bunn is supernally beautiful and stubbornly chaste, which is why Patrick Standish, an arrogant schoolmaster, wants her so much. This perceptive coming of age novel about a northern girl who moves south, wants to fit in and yet wants to preserve...

Prvotina slavného britského prozaika Kingsleyho Amise se okamžitě po svém uveřejnění v roce 1954 zařadila mezi nejoblíbenější a nejčtenější romány. Jen během prvních čtyř let se dočkala dvaceti vydání. Čtenáře od počátku až do dnešní doby baví neodolatelným vtipem a sžíravou ironií, s nimiž Amis zaznamenal, jak mladý James Dixon přišel o iluze ve zkostnatělém prostředí malé anglické univerzity v provinčním městě.

Just when Stanley Duke thinks it safe to sink into middle age, his son goes insane. As if that wasn't terrible enough, Stanley finds himself beset on all sides by women - neurotic, cantankerous, half-baked or just plain capricious. As one by one they gnaw away at his composure, Stanley wonders whether insanity is not something with which all women are intimately acquainted.