We've rounded up 20 great books we think everyone should read by 50

Classics-to-read-by-Age_50s_Desktop_Hero_Penguin.gif

Reading lists

20 books everyone should read in their fifties

Collected Poems

<a href="https://shop.penguin.co.uk/collections/book-bundles-modern-classics/?&amp;utm_source=Penguin.co.uk&amp;utm_medium=Linked_text&amp;utm_campaign=Penguin_Modern_Classics_Series_26_06">Choose 3 timeless classics for only £21 over on the Penguin Shop</a>

'One of the very best of our poets' Anthony Powell 
 
Kingsley Amis wrote poems throughout his life, turning his acerbic, bracing perceptiveness on the same subjects that fill his novels: lust, lost love, drink, money, God (seen as indifferent or malign), and old age. Collected Poems, arranged chronologically, shows the full range of his sparkling verse, by turns scabrous and melancholy, satirical and playful. 
 
'Scathingly funny ... bawdy and tragic, unflinching and unapologetic, culpable and morally acute ... Amis's poems rush headlong into the messiness of life' New Criterion 
 
'A contender for the title of the most accomplished and least self-satisfied poet of his generation' Clive James

Amis has no faults. He is clever, witty, ironical

'Bare-knuckled, witty, light but never 'lite', outward-looking instead of inward-gazing - a kind of red-blooded vers de société'

Kingsley Amis was born in south London in 1922 and was educated at the City of London School and St John's College, Oxford. After the sucess of Lucky Jim in 1954, Kingsley Amis wrote over twenty novels, including The Alteration (1976), winner of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award; The Old Devils (1986), winner of the Booker Prize; and The Biographer's Moustache (1995), which was to be his last book. He wrote ephemerally on politics, education, language, films, television, restaurants and drink. Kingsley Amis was awarded the CBE in 1981 and received a knighthood in 1990.

Although best known for his comic novels, Kingsley Amis wrote poetry throughout his career. Collected Poems spans subjects from nature and cricket to love, ageing and literature, brimming with his characteristic wit and irreverence, yet full of compassion. 'The Last War' brings home the futility of battle by portraying countries as flawed characters destined for misfortune, while 'Their Oxford' reflects on the passing of time, and in contrast the playful 'Sight Unseen' laments the difficulty of attracting women. By turns provocative and poignant, this collection provides an illuminating glimpse into the heart and mind of Amis.

Selected Non-fiction

The Amis Collection

'Amis has no faults. He is clever, witty, ironical' Guardian 
 
What advice can one give a green young author? What purpose do literary prizes serve? Where on earth can a man get a decent bite to eat? This entertaining collection is vintage Kingsley Amis, revealing him at his most robust and incisive, cutting a swathe through such subjects as writers and writing, 'Abroad', eating and drinking, music, language and education. He turns a clear and critical eye on Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Powell, Anthony Burgess, Ian Fleming and Philip Larkin, and does not spare their potential readers in 'Sod the Public: A Consumer's Guide'. In typically razor-sharp, wicked and witty prose, Amis tackles the culture and conceits of his era.

Kingsley Amis's (1922-95) works take a humorous yet highly critical look at British society, especially in the period following the end of World War II. Born in London, Amis explored his disillusionment in novels such as That Uncertain Feeling (1955). His other works include The Green Man (1970), Stanley and the Women (1984), and The Old Devils (1986), which won the Booker Prize. Amis also wrote poetry, criticism, and short stories.

What advice can one give a green young author? What purpose do literary prizes serve? Where on earth can a man get a decent bite to eat? This entertaining collection is vintage Kingsley Amis, revealing him at his most robust and incisive, cutting a swathe through such subjects as writers and writing, 'Abroad', eating and drinking, music, language and education. He turns a clear and critical eye on Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Powell, Anthony Burgess, Ian Fleming and Philip Larkin, and does not spare their potential readers in 'Sod the Public: A Consumer's Guide'. In typically razor-sharp, wicked and witty prose, Amis tackles the culture and conceits of his era.

Stanley And The Women

'A great storyteller, although he was much more than a storyteller' - Keith Waterhouse

Brought to you by Penguin. 
 
Just when Stanley Duke thinks it safe to sink into middle age, his son goes insane. As if that wasn't terrible enough, Stanley finds himself beset on all sides by women - neurotic, cantankerous, half-baked or just plain capricious. As one by one they gnaw away at his composure, Stanley wonders whether insanity is not something with which all women are intimately acquainted. 
 
© Kinglsey Amis 1984 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

He was a genuine comic writer, probably the best after P. G. Wodehouse ... He had a lasting influence and was a very good novelist

Kingsley Amis was born in south London in 1922 and was educated at the City of London School and St John's College, Oxford. After the publication of Lucky Jim in 1954, Kingsley Amis wrote over twenty novels, including The Alteration, winner of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, The Old Devils, winner of the Booker Prize in 1986, and The Biographer's Moustache, which was to be his last book. He also wrote on politics, education, language, films, television, restaurants and drink. Kingsley Amis was awarded the CBE in 1981 and received a knighthood in 1990. He died in October 1995.

Brought to you by Penguin. 
 
Just when Stanley Duke thinks it safe to sink into middle age, his son goes insane. As if that wasn't terrible enough, Stanley finds himself beset on all sides by women - neurotic, cantankerous, half-baked or just plain capricious. As one by one they gnaw away at his composure, Stanley wonders whether insanity is not something with which all women are intimately acquainted.

Jake's Thing

'In these explicit days, Mr Amis is the laureate of the unsayable, the literary it man' Sunday Telegraph

Brought to you by Penguin. 
 
Jake Richardson, an Oxford don nearing sixty with a lifetime's lechery behind him, is in pursuit of his lost libido and heads of to the consulting room of a miniature sex therapist. Not one to disobey a doctor's orders, he runs the full humiliating gamut of sex labs and trendy 'workshops', where more than souls are bared. He decks himself with cunning gadgetry, dreams up a weekly fantasy, pets diligently with his overweight wife and browses listlessly through porn magazines behind locked doors. Is sex really worth it? As liberationists abuse him, a campus hostess bores him into bed - and even his own wife starts acting oddly - Jake seriously begins to wonder. 
 
© Kingsley Amis 1978 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

Brought to you by Penguin. 
 
Jake Richardson, an Oxford don nearing sixty with a lifetime's lechery behind him, is in pursuit of his lost libido and heads of to the consulting room of a miniature sex therapist. Not one to disobey a doctor's orders, he runs the full humiliating gamut of sex labs and trendy 'workshops', where more than souls are bared. He decks himself with cunning gadgetry, dreams up a weekly fantasy, pets diligently with his overweight wife and browses listlessly through porn magazines behind locked doors. Is sex really worth it? As liberationists abuse him, a campus hostess bores him into bed - and even his own wife starts acting oddly - Jake seriously begins to wonder.

The Alteration

A comic masterpiece by one of Britain's best-loved writers.

Brought to you by Penguin. 
 
Hubert Anvil is a 10 year old boy blessed with the voice of an angel. The Church hierarchy decrees that Hubert should be turned into a castrato - an alteration that could bring Hubert fame and fortune, but would also cut him off from an adult world he is curious to discover. In a dystopian world where Martin Luther never reformed and where the Holy Office's power is absolute, where will Hubert turn if he decides to defy their wishes 
 
©Kingsley Amis 1976 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

Kingsley Amis's coruscating tour de force...

Certain of his place up alongside P.G. Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh and Anthony Powell among the English comic masters of the twentieth century.

The disorientating world of The Alteration is the same but different, familiar yet strange

Brought to you by Penguin. 
 
Hubert Anvil is a 10 year old boy blessed with the voice of an angel. The Church hierarchy decrees that Hubert should be turned into a castrato - an alteration that could bring Hubert fame and fortune, but would also cut him off from an adult world he is curious to discover. In a dystopian world where Martin Luther never reformed and where the Holy Office's power is absolute, where will Hubert turn if he decides to defy their wishes 
 
©Kingsley Amis 1976 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

The Green Man

'Contains all the best and familiar Amis qualities - including superb sexual comedy' Sunday Times

Brought to you by Penguin. 
 
Like all good coaching inns, The Green Man is said to boast a resident ghost: Dr Thomas Underhill, a notorious seventeenth-century practitioner of black arts and sexual deviancy. However, the landlord, Maurice Allington, is the sole witness to the renaissance of the malevolent Underhill. Led by an anxious desire to vindicate his sanity, Allington strives to uncover the key to Underhill's satanic powers. All while the skeletons in Allington's own cupboard rattle to get out. 
 
© Kingsley Amis 1969 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

A marvellous ghost story, shimmering with panic

A splendid chiller [and] extremely funny book... Indeed, the success of this novel depends very much on the balance that Amis maintains between laughter and fear

Contains all the best and familiar Amis qualities - including superb sexual comedy.

Brought to you by Penguin. 
 
Like all good coaching inns, The Green Man is said to boast a resident ghost: Dr Thomas Underhill, a notorious seventeenth-century practitioner of black arts and sexual deviancy. However, the landlord, Maurice Allington, is the sole witness to the renaissance of the malevolent Underhill. Led by an anxious desire to vindicate his sanity, Allington strives to uncover the key to Underhill's satanic powers. All while the skeletons in Allington's own cupboard rattle to get out.

Memoirs

Brought to you by Penguin. 
 
'Endlessly entertaining... Good, rollicking stuff, and a delight to read... Sir Kingsley Amis is surely one of the funniest men alive' Auberon Waugh, Sunday Telegraph 
 
Elegant, provocative and hugely entertaining, Kingsley Amis's memoirs are filled with anecdotes, experiences and portraits of famous friends, family, acquaintances (and a few eminent foes). From his childhood days to Oxford and army life, his travels abroad and his years as a successful novelist, Memoirs offers extraordinary insights into a unique literary life. 
 
© Kingsley Amis 1991 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

The Old Devils

A copy should be given out with every bus pass.

A brilliant novel. It is sadly comic and comically sad

A bloody funny lovely bloody book... A genius at full throttle

In these explicit days, Mr Amis is the laureate of the unsayable, the literary it man

Brought to you by Penguin. 
 
Malcolm, Peter and Charlie and their Soave-sodden wives have one main ambition left in life: to drink Wales dry. But their routine is both shaken and stirred when they are joined by professional Welshman Alun Weaver (CBE) and his wife, Rhiannon. 
 
© Kingsley Amis 1986 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

You Can't Do Both

'Has you moved to tears. Amis amazes at every turn - A masterpiece from a master' Mail on Sunday

Acutely and poignantly observed-there is still fire in the old devil's belly

As finely judged, as exactly observed, as vividly conceived as anything he has written

Funny, touching, well-constructed, sharply evocative of time and place and written with characteristic Amisian aplomb. It is a first class addition to his oeuvre

Brought to you by Penguin. 
 
Robin Davies knows how to look after number one. Raised in a bland suburb of South London in the 1930s, Robin longs for the freedom to do what he wants. When he escapes to study in Oxford, he meets Nancy Bennett, a young woman even less worldly than himself. As Robin stumbles through his rites of passage to adulthood, involving rebellion, self-discovery, sex, war, seduction and the threat of commitment, we come to realise just how far he will go to have his cake and eat it. 
 
©Kingsley Amis 1994 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

All the Blood Within Me

Boarding the train at Euston, Alec begins the journey to his former lover's funeral. Theirs was an affair acknowledged and so permanent that they called themselves 'the Trio', but now only two of them remain. Returning, 'Uncle Alec' will be welcomed by his lover's children, her husband, Jim, and the suburban world that he left behind. As memories are rehashed and acquaintances re-met, this is a short tale of regret, old age and the lies that we tell ourselves. Through conversations, half-hung sentences and painful allusions, Kingsley Amis contemplates the purpose of love, the myriad ways of loving, and the complex web of relationships and distortions that make up our humanity.

'Endlessly entertaining... Good, rollicking stuff, and a delight to read... Sir Kingsley Amis is surely one of the funniest men alive' Auberon Waugh, Sunday Telegraph

Endlessly entertaining... Good, rollicking stuff, and a delight to read... Sir Kingsley Amis is surely one of the funniest men alive

Horribly enjoyable... The chief feeling is shame at laughing quite so much

Kingsley Amis's funniest book since Lucky Jim. It's humour is heart-warmingly malicious

He is nasty about people that have amply deserved it one way or the other; he deflates pretension; he exposes doublethink...he also excels in hailing poets and truepennies

Amis can be sharp and even brutal as well as funny and indiscreet...he has evidently written Memoirs with relish

Elegant, provocative and hugely entertaining, Kingsley Amis's memoirs are filled with anecdotes, experiences and portraits of famous friends, family, acquaintances (and a few eminent foes). From his childhood days to Oxford and army life, his travels abroad and his years as a successful novelist, Memoirs offers extraordinary insights into a unique literary life.

Difficulties With Girls

In Kingsley Amis's Difficulties With Girls, Jenny Bunn and Patrick Standish have settled into London life with their troubled courtship long behind them. Patrick works in publishing and Jenny teaches sick children in a hospital. They have reached a certain level of maturity, or so they think. It is not long before they realize their respectability will be severely tested by seductive neighbours with a taste for whisky, the sexually confused Ted Valentine, and the literary set of Hampstead. 
 
In this funny and provocative study of a young couple growing up, Amis shows us that the difficulty with marriage is that it's so hard to preserve, especially when Patrick and Jenny harbour deep yearnings for a different kind of life. 
 
Kingsley Amis's (1922-95) works take a humorous yet highly critical look at British society, especially in the period following the end of World War II. Born in London, Amis explored his disillusionment in novels such as That Uncertain Feeling (1955). His other works include The Green Man (1970), Stanley and the Women (1984), and The Old Devils (1986), which won the Booker Prize. Amis also wrote poetry, criticism, and short stories.

'The gradual deepening texture, which opens to deep feeling beneath the comic surface, justifies it all'

Take A Girl Like You

In Kingsley Amis's Take A Girl Like You, twenty year old Jenny Bunn is supernally beautiful and stubbornly chaste, which is why Patrick Standish, an arrogant schoolmaster, wants her so much. This perceptive coming of age novel about a northern girl who moves south, wants to fit in and yet wants to preserve her principles, challenges our assumptions about the battle of the sexes and classes in Britain. It is a story about 'the squalid business of the man and the woman' and 'the most wonderful thing that had ever happened' to Jenny Bunn. 
 
Few twentieth century novelists have explored our preoccupation with sex like Kingsley Amis. The results are surprising and often hilarious. 
 
Kingsley Amis's (1922-95) works take a humorous yet highly critical look at British society, especially in the period following the end of World War II. Born in London, Amis explored his disillusionment in novels such as That Uncertain Feeling (1955). His other works include The Green Man (1970), Stanley and the Women (1984), and The Old Devils (1986), which won the Booker Prize. Amis also wrote poetry, criticism, and short stories.

That Uncertain Feeling

In That Uncertain Feeling by Kingsley Amis, competition is stiff for the position of sub-librarian in Aberdarcy Library. For John Lewis, the situation is complicated by the attentions of daunting and desirable village socialite, Elizabeth Gruffyd-Williams, who is married to a member of the local Council. Pursuing an affair with her whilst keeping his job prospects alive is John's predicament, as he finds himself running down Welsh country lanes at midnight in a wig and dress, resisting the advances of local drunks and suffering the long speeches of a 'nut-faced' clergyman. 
 
At times tenderly satirical and at times riotously slap-stick, Amis sends up an array of rural stereotypes in this story about a man who doesn't know what he wants. 
 
Kingsley Amis's (1922-95) works take a humorous yet highly critical look at British society, especially in the period following the end of World War II. Born in London, Amis explored his disillusionment in novels such as That Uncertain Feeling (1955). His other works include The Green Man (1970), Stanley and the Women (1984), and The Old Devils (1986), which won the Booker Prize. Amis also wrote poetry, criticism, and short stories.

Complete Stories

The short stories of Kingsley Amis - the great master of post-war comic prose - are dark, playful, moving, surprising and extremely funny. This definitive collection gathers all Amis's short fiction in a single volume for the first time and encompasses five decades of storytelling. In 'The 2003 Claret', written in 1958, a time machine is invented for the weighty task of sending a man to 2010 to discover what the booze will taste like. In 'Boris and the Colonel' a Cambridge spy is unearthed in the sleepy English countryside with the help of a plucky horse, while In 'Mason's Life' two men meet inside their respective dreams. The collection spans many genres, offering ingenious alternative histories, mystery and horror, satirical reflections and a devilishly funny attacks. Amis's stories reveal the scope of his imagination and the warmth beneath his acerbic humour, and they all share the unmistakable style and wit of one of Britain's best loved writers. 
 
Kingsley Amis' (1922-1995) works take a humorous yet highly critical look at British society, especially of the period following the end of World War II. Born in London, Amis explored his disillusionment with British society in novels such as THAT UNCERTAIN FEELING (1955). His other works include THE GREEN MAN (1970); STANLEY AND THE WOMEN (1984); and THE OLD DEVILS (1986) which won the Booker Prize. Amis also wrote poetry, criticism, and short stories. 
 
Rachel Cusk was born in 1967. She has won the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Somerset Maugham Award, and is the author of two works of non-fiction and seven novels, including In The Fold, longlisted for the 2005 Man Booker Prize, and Arlington Park, shortlisted for the Orange Broadband Prize 2007. Her non-fiction book, A Life's Work, was published to huge acclaim in 2001, and her account of a summer spent in Italy with her family, The Last Supper, was published in 2009. Her most recent novel, The Bradshaw Variations was published in 2009. In 2003 she was chosen as one of Granta's Best Young Novelists. She lives in Brighton.

A key figure in postwar British culture, whose importance and influence cannot be measured ... distinctive and original

'Among the English comic masters of the twentieth century'

A ceaselessly fresh and adorable body of work ... exasperation made poetry

Kingsley Amis was a big, humane novelist, interested in all manner of people very unlike himself

Kingsley Amis' (1922-1995) works take a humorous yet highly critical look at British society, especially of the period following the end of World War II. Born in London, Amis explored his disillusionment with British society in novels such as THAT UNCERTAIN FEELING (1955). His other works include THE GREEN MAN (1970); STANLEY AND THE WOMEN (1984); and THE OLD DEVILS (1986) which won the Booker Prize. Amis also wrote poetry, criticism, and short stories. 
 
Rachel Cusk was born in 1967. She has won the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Somerset Maugham Award, and is the author of two works of non-fiction and seven novels, including In The Fold, longlisted for the 2005 Man Booker Prize, and Arlington Park, shortlisted for the Orange Broadband Prize 2007. Her non-fiction book, A Life's Work, was published to huge acclaim in 2001, and her account of a summer spent in Italy with her family, The Last Supper, was published in 2009. Her most recent novel, The Bradshaw Variations was published in 2009. In 2003 she was chosen as one of Granta's Best Young Novelists. She lives in Brighton.

The Anti-Death League

To have said so much about the human condition with such lightness of touch ... is an extraordinary achievement

In this surreal comedy of soldiers and spies, Lieutenant James Churchill and his colleagues find themselves questioning their purpose. Are they for death or against it? These men of action will travel between the barracks, the lunatic asylum and the house of an aristocratic nymphomaniac in search of answers. For while few know the awful truth about Operation Apollo, the mission they are being trained for, fewer still understand the motives of the powerful psychiatrist Dr Best, who thinks he is surrounded by repressed homosexuals, and none know the identity of the secret agent among them. When the Anti-Death League is founded they are at last offered the chance to rebel and perhaps escape ...

New Maps of Hell

The most important and influential critical work on science fiction

In this hilarious, inspiring and provocative series of essays, Kingsley Amis introduces every reader to the wonders and value of science fiction writing. From the extraordinary ideas but sexless science of Jules Verne to the power of H. G. Wells's terrifying storytelling; from the brilliance of bad science fiction writing to the potency of their important ideas; from a portrait of the average SF reader to Amis's sad prediction that this genre will never make it in film or television, New Maps of Hell is a warm and witty exploration of a world many readers may be yet to discover.

I Want It Now

Brings all the earlier works into focus. Amis is still master of the comedy of irrelevance. The novel is funny because it is serious. It is also wonderfully readable

The quickest way to get rich is to marry someone rich, but how do you do this if you aren't yet rich? TV chat-show host Ronnie Appleyard is preoccupied with this question as he pursues wealthy heiress Simona Quick over two continents in the company of braying aristocrats, Greek shipping magnates, American dandies and the dreaded mother-in-law to be. But as he comes closer to his prize other questions present themselves. Is the androgenous Simona really worth it? Why doesn't she like sex? Is it possible to drink all day? With his unerring eye for absurdity and class satire Kingsley Amis shows us what happens when money meets naked ambition.

The Riverside Villas Murder

At the nasty bits, you feel like someone coming across a meat-cleaver in a cot

A mummy is stolen from a small town museum along with some Roman coins and a soaking wet man collapses in fourteen year old Peter Furneaux's living room bleeding from the head. What was a suspected student prank is followed by murder. At first it is impossible to see the connection, but the eccentric Colonel Manton does. With Peter's help the Colonel unravels a mystery that strikes fear into the heart of a genteel suburban neighbourhood and gives Peter rather more excitement than he bargained for at the tennis club social. This meticulously paced thriller shows Amis at his most subtle and daring.

The Folks That Live On The Hill

Like Waugh he is a consummate writer of sentences, a mordant practitioner of perfected English prose ... Amis's gift for outrage is as alert as ever

Sometimes sharply funny, sometimes bluntly genial, altogether the most successful book he has written for years

Harry Caldecote is the most charming man you'll ever meet, a convivial academic who devotes his life to others. He is on call when his alcoholic niece falls into strange hands, when his brother threatens to emulate Wordsworth, when his son's lesbian lodger is beaten up by her girlfriend. He endures misplaced seductions, swindles and aggressive dogs just to keep the peace at the King's pub in Shepherd's Hill. But when the Adams' Institute of Cultural and Commercial History in America offers him the opportunity to do 'whatever he wanted to do' in a picturesque lakeside town, he faces a choice between freedom or responsibility - and whether to take charge of his own life.

Kingsley Amis

Christopher Cazenove

Gayle Hunnicutt

Iain Cuthbertson

Tom Watson

Freddie Jones

Peter Jeffrey

Ken Stott

Nigel Anthony

Anna Calder-Marshall

Alan Bennett

Robert Hardy

Full Cast

I Spy Strangers, I Want It Now, All Free Now based on Girl 20 and more

Adaptations of Kingley Amis’s great novels and acclaimed short stories 
 
Novelist, poet and critic Kingsley Amis was one of Britain’s greatest post-war writers. A master of comic fiction, he came to fame in 1954, and won the 1986 Booker Prize for The Old Devils. Included in this collection are dramatisations of seven of his short stories and two novels, all imbued with his characteristic wit and social satire. 
 
We begin with ‘To See the Sun’, a tantalising tale of vampires, a mad Scots librarian, a handsome Englishman and a Countess, set in 1920s Dacia. In ‘Moral Fibre’, a Welsh librarian tangles with a social worker determined to save a young girl from sin, while in ‘All the Blood Within Me’, Alec attends the funeral of the only woman he has ever loved: and faces some uncomfortable truths. Tensions run high in ‘I Spy Strangers’ as a group of soldiers in 1945 hold a mock parliament; poet A E Potter questions the value of his art in ‘Dear Illusions’ and in ‘Affairs of Death’, the confessions of the Scottish King Macbeth trouble the conscience of Pope Leo X. 
 
Set in the late ’60s, I Want It Now centres around ambitious TV personality Ronnie Appleyard, who pursues wealthy Simona Quick for her money, only to fall in love. And recently recovered in the BBC’s Treasure Hunt, ‘Something Strange’ features four inhabitants of a space capsule, who have unusual experiences to report. 
Based on Amis’s classic novel Girl, 20 and written by Tony Bilbow, All Free Now is a hilarious observation of the Sixties’ permissive society. 
 
Please note: I Want It Now is an archive dramatisation from 1977, and the language used reflects some of the attitudes of that time. Due to the archive nature of some of the pieces, the sound quality may vary. 
 
Cast and credits 
Written by Kingsley Amis 
All Free Now written by Tony Bilbow, based on Kingsley Amis’s novel Girl, 20 
 
To See the Sun 
Cast: Christopher Cazenove, Gayle Hunnicutt, Graham Crowden, Alan Dudley, Jennifer Piercey, Zelah Clarke 
Dramatised by John Scotney 
Directed by Jane Morgan 
 
Moral Fibre 
Cast: Sion Tudor Owen, Julie Berry, Thelma Whiteley, Victoria Carling, Steve Hodson, Jennifer Piercey, Simon Cuff, Susan Sheridan 
Dramatised by John Scotney 
Directed by Jane Morgan 
 
All the Blood Within Me 
Cast: Tom Watson, David Sinclair, Mia Soteriou, Jonathan Tafler, Caroline Gruber, Jill Lidstone, Alan Dudley, Brian Hewlitt, Kim Hughes 
Dramatised by John Scotney 
Directed by Jane Morgan 
Piano: Mary Nash 
 
I Spy Strangers 
Cast: Iain Cuthbertson, Steve Hodson, Anthony Jackson, Philip Fox, Kim Wall, Michael Deacon, Paul Sirr, John Samson 
Dramatised by John Scotney 
Directed by Jane Morgan 
 
Dear Illusion 
Cast: Freddie Jones, Carolyn Pickles, Shaun Prendergast, Brian Hewitt, Alan Dudley, Michael Deacon 
Dramatised by John Scotney 
Directed by Jane Morgan 
 
Affairs of Death 
Cast: Peter Jeffrey, Ken Stott, Olivier Pierre, Kim Wall 
Dramatised by John Scotney 
Directed by Jane Morgan 
 
I Want It Now 
Cast: Nigel Anthony, David March, Irene Sutcliffe, Bruce Beeby, Anna Calder-Marshall, Margaret Robertson, William Fox, Alaric Cotter, Jonathan Scott, Penelope Reynolds, William Eedle, Heather Bell, Harry Towb, Harold Kasket, Rod Beacham, Michael Harbour 
Adapted by Frederick Bradnum 
Directed by Betty Davies 
 
Something Strange 
Cast: Noel Johnson, Garard Green, Nerys Hughes, Olive Gregg, Charlotte Mitchell, Frank Duncan, David Garth, Tom Watson, Brian Wilde and members of the BBC Drama Repertory Company 
Produced by Christopher Holme 
 
All Free Now 
Cast: Robert Stephens, Christopher Timothy, Eva Stuart, Geoffrey Whitehead, Kim Thomson, Anna Mazzotti, Okon Jones, Michael Graham Cox, Adrian Egan, Richard Pearce, Joan Walker, Michael Dean 
Produced by Matthew Walters 
 
Text copyright © The Estate of Kingsley Amis 1958 (‘Moral Fibre’), 1960 (‘Something Strange’), 1962 (‘All the Blood Within Me’, ‘I Spy Strangers’), 1968 (I Want It Now),1972 (‘Dear Illusion’), 1980 (‘To See the Sun’), 1982 (‘Affairs of Death’) 
All Free Now copyright © Tony Bilbow 1989 
 
© 2024 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd. (P) 2024 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

Kingsley Amis: A BBC Radio Drama Collection

About us

About Us (Header 4)

Best-Jane-Austen-quotes_Online-Desktop_Penguin

James-Baldwin

Marian-Keyes

haruki-murakami-320×320-1

Richard-Osman

Malorie Blackman

Lisa-Jewell

Charlie-Mackesy

Authors (Header 3)

Children&#039;s

Company

Discover

Fiction

Non-fiction

Penguin Classics

Penguin Shop (Header 5)

Useful links

Work with us

sectionTitle

isEnabled

anchor

anchorLabel

prhuk/featured-book

prhuk/praise-section

maxBooks

showViewMore

prhuk/books-section

hideAuthorAlert

formName

iterableDivision

iterableBrand

buttonText

description

heading

legalText

successHeading

successText

image

alignment

variation

prhuk/email-section

prhuk/series-section

prhuk/biography-section

prhuk/articles-section

prhuk-authors

The perfect gift? A Penguin Shop gift card

Kingsley Amis

Books by Kingsley Amis

Articles featuring Kingsley Amis

20 books everyone should read in their fifties

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter