Jix Dixon has a terrible job at a second-rate university. His life is full of things he could happily do without. If he can just deliver a lecture on Merrie England, a moderately successful career surely awaits him. But without luck, life is never simple...

Kingsley Amis was born in London in 1922, educated at City of London School and St John's College, Oxford, and worked for a time as a university lecturer. Following the publication of Lucky Jim in 1954 he wrote over twenty novels, including The Alteration (1976), The Old Devils (1986), winner of the Booker Prize, and The Biographer's Moustache (1995), which was to be his last book. He published a variety of other work, writing about politics, education, language, films, restaurants and drink. Kingsley Amis received a knighthood in 1990, and died in October 1995.