Ending Up

Kingsley Amis peaked early with Lucky Jim, published in 1954 when he was 32. He never wrote anything remotely as good and it beats me how Ending Up got nominated for the Booker Prize. I suppose the judges warmed to it as it’s only 113 pages.

I don’t believe John Mortimer had read it when he called Amis “a genuinely comic writer, probably the best after PG Wodehouse”. Ending Up is about five elderly people living in poverty, discomfort and ill health in a remote cottage in Suffolk. It is about their relationships with each other, their ailments, their weaknesses and their fears. Amis was only 54 when it was published. How can he have formed such a jaundiced view of old age? The humour is too cruel and dark to be funny. It’s a travesty to compare him to Plum.

Hitherto I have not mentioned the only time I met Sir Kingsley. It was in the 1980s in a room above L’Escargot, a restaurant in Greek Street. The Scotch Malt Whisky Society, of which I am an early member, had their first tasting in London and I turned up with two guests. The founder of the Society was present, the heir to the Marquis of Bath (he now is the M of B), Sir K and perhaps a couple more. The evening began sedately, comparing cask strength malts diluted with different sorts of water. We kept at it and the atmosphere changed. It was like being on a ship in heavy seas. Kingsley clung to me for support as we lurched over to the bottles for refills. We were as pissed as Gussie Fink-Nottle’s newts. The Society realised they had overdone it and no subsequent London tastings were a binge on such a colossal scale.

The Society now has premises in London and it behoves me to pay a visit and tell you what they are up to.