In 1968 the owners of the James Bond property, Glidrose Publications, attempted to continue the series by hiring different novelists, all writing under the pseudonym 'Robert Markham'. Bond historians and Fleming biographers have, in recent years, debunked this theory, indicating that no such ghostwriter was ever employed, although Amis is known to have provided suggestions on how to improve the manuscript which were rejected. 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. William 'Bill' Tanner', Tanner being M's Chief of Staff in many of Fleming's Bond novels. Later, 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. He wrote the popular The James Bond Dossier under his own name. Kingsley Amis became associated with Ian Fleming's creation, James Bond, in the 1960s, writing critical works connected with the fictional spy, either under a pseudonym or uncredited. Like his son, the older Amis was an atheist. He had three children, including the novelist Martin Amis, who movingly wrote of his father's life and decline, largely due to alcohol, in his memoir Experience. He received a knighthood in 1990.Īmis was twice married, first in 1948 to Hilary Bardwell, then to novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard, in 1965 they divorced in 1983. He discusses his political change of heart in the essay 'Why Lucky Jim Turned Right' (1967), and it percolates into later works such as his 1980 dystopian novel Russian Hide and Seek.Īmis's novel about a group of retired friends, The Old Devils, won the Booker Prize in 1986. Thereafter, Amis was stridently anti-communist, even reactionary. He broke away from Communism when the USSR invaded Hungary in 1956. After serving in the Royal Corps of Signals in the Second World War, Amis achieved popular success with his first novel Lucky Jim.Īs a young man, Kingsley Amis was a vocal Communist and a member of the Communist Party.

Kingsley Amis was born in London, educated at the City of London School and St. He authored the James Bond novel Colonel Sun in 1968. He was the father of the British novelist Martin Amis. He wrote more than twenty novels, three collections of poetry, short stories, radio and television scripts, and books of social and literary criticism. Sir Kingsley William Amis (Ap– October 22, 1995) was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher.

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