Spectrum 5

KingsleyAmis, the author of Lucky Jim, was born in the south of London in 1922. His first interest in literature was in the field of poetry. At the age of eleven he was writing verse, at the university he was one of the editors of Oxford Poetry 1949, and his own poetry has been published in two books: A Frame of Mind and A Case of Samples. His name is often to be seen in British newspapers and magazines as the writer of articles and reviews. Lucky Jim, published in 1954, was Amis's firs...

Robert Conquest was born in Malvern, Worcestershire, the son of an American businessman and a Norwegian mother. He was educated at Winchester College, the University of Grenoble, Oxford University, where he was an exhibitioner in modern history and took his bachelor's and master's degrees in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, and his doctorate in Soviet history. In 1937, after a year studying at the University of Grenoble and traveling in Bulgaria, he returned to Oxford and joined the Communist...