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MI6 previews "The Life of Kinglsey Amis" by
Zachary Leader, a definitive biography of the controversial
figure and one-time James Bond continuation novelist...
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The Life Of Kinglsey Amis - Preview
18th May 2007
The Life Of Kingsley Amis - Zachary Leader
Here
is the authorized, definitive biography of one of the most controversial
figures of twentieth-century literature, renowned
for his blistering intelligence, savage wit and belligerent fierceness
of opinion: Kingsley Amis was not only the finest comic novelist
of his generation–having first achieved prominence with
the publication of Lucky Jim in 1954 and as one of the Angry
Young Men–but also a dominant figure in post—World
War II British writing as novelist, poet, critic and polemicist.
Bonding With Kingsley Amis
Kingsley Amis became associated with Ian
Fleming's James Bond in the 1960s,
writing critical works connected with the fictional spy, either under a
pseudonym or uncredited. In 1965, he wrote the popular The James Bond Dossier
under his own name. That same year, he wrote, The Book of Bond, or, Every
Man His Own 007, a tongue-in-cheek how-to manual about being a sophisticated
spy, under the pseudonym "Lt Col. William ('Bill') Tanner", Tanner
being M's Chief of Staff in many of Fleming's Bond novels.
It is widely claimed that after Fleming died in 1964 following
completion of an early draft of The
Man with the Golden Gun, the publisher commissioned Amis and possibly other
writers to finish the manuscript. Bond historians and Fleming
biographers have in recent years debunked this theory,
indicating that no such ghostwriter was ever employed,
though Amis did provide suggestions on how to improve the
manuscript, later rejected. |
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In 1968 the owners of the James Bond property, Glidrose Publications,
attempted to continue the series by hiring different novelists,
all of whom were to publish under the pseudonym "Robert Markham".
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In the event, Amis's
Colonel Sun was the first and only Bond novel to be published
under that name. It is widely believed that Amis had planned
to write a second Bond novel but was talked out of it.
Colonel Sun was adapted as a comic
strip in the Daily Express in 1969. In
a 2005 Titan Books reprint volume of the comic strip,
an introductory chapter (penned by the editors of mi6-hq.com)
stated that Amis planned to write a short story featuring
an elderly Bond coming out of retirement for one last mission,
but Glidrose refused him permission to write it.
Amis was
unsuccessful at persuading Eon Productions to adapt his
novel as a film. The article states that Amis was told
that Harry
Saltzman (co-producer of the Bond series up until 1974)
had "blackballed" any
use of Colonel Sun as a Bond film, apparently in response
to Glidrose having rejected the publication of the post-Fleming
Bond novel, Per Fine Ounce by Geoffrey Jenkins, which Saltzman
had championed.
In 2002, however, Colonel Sun was clearly
referenced in the James Bond film Die
Another Day in which the villain was named Colonel
Tan-Sun Moon. |
Official Blurb
In The Life of Kingsley Amis, Zachary Leader, acclaimed
editor of The Letters of Kingsley Amis, draws not only
on unpublished works and correspondence but also on
interviews
with a wide range of Amis’s friends, relatives, fellow
writers, students and colleagues, many of whom have never
spoken out before. The result is a compulsively readable
account of Amis’s childhood, school days and life as
a student at Oxford, teacher, critic, political and cultural
commentator, professional author, husband, father and lover.
Even as he makes the case for Amis’s cultural
centrality–at his death Time magazine claimed that “the
British decades between 1955 and 1995 should in fairness
be called ‘the Amis era’”–Leader
explores the writer’s phobias, self-doubts and ambitions;
the controversies in which he was embroiled; and the role
that drink played in a life bedeviled by erotic entanglements,
domestic turbulence and personal disaster.
Order
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UK - Hardback
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USA - Hardback
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Above: Front cover artwork (UK hardback) |
“Very thorough and very straight-talking. It’s also
very clear in its aims. [Leader] displays the facts of each matter
plainly, allowing readers to deliver their own praise and blame,
and counterbalances them with his attention to the work. It’s
an impressively well-judged response.”
– The Guardian
| Data Stream
Title: The Life Of Kingsley Amis
Author: Zachary Leader
Publisher: Jonathan Cape (UK), Pantheon (USA)
Released: 16th November 2006 (UK), 24th April 2007 (USA)
R.R.P: £25.00 (UK) / $39.95 (USA)
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 600 (UK) / 1008 (USA)
ISBN: 0224062271 (UK) / 0375424989 (USA)
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About The Author
Zachary Leader is a professor of English literature at
Roehampton University in England. Among his books are
studies of Romantic
poetry and modern British fiction. Leader edited The Letters
of Kingsley Amis (“One of the last major monuments
of the epistolary art)”
– The Sunday Telegraph. |
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