Intelligence Squared

To mark the passing of one of Britain's most celebrated writers, we’re replaying an event recorded with us in November 2020. Martin Amis was often called the Mick Jagger of the British book world. As famous for his love affairs, his friendships and his complicated family history as for his dazzling prose, he dominated the literary scene for decades.  In this exclusive Intelligence Squared event, made in partnership with Penguin Live, he speaks about his much anticipated autobiographical novel Inside Story. It is perhaps Amis’s most intimate book, a meditation on love, loss, ageing and death. We encounter the vivid characters who have helped define Amis – his father Kingsley, his literary hero Saul Bellow, the poet Philip Larkin and his novelist stepmother Elizabeth Jane Howard.  And of course there is his lifelong friend and conversation partner, Christopher Hitchens, whose death from cancer he chronicles in some of the tenderest prose he has ever written.  In conversation with novelist Alex Preston, Amis ref