It would have given Kingsley Amis no end of pleasure to learn that his New York Times obituary gave him credit for writing a number of novels that made it to the silver screen, most notably Lord Jim. “Laziness,” Amis told me one bright September morning in Wales, “laziness has become the chief characteristic of journalism, displacing incompetence.” And how; Lord Jim is, of course, by Joseph Conrad. Lucky Jim was the title Amis gave to his famous first novel, published in 1954.

Amis delivered his barb with a polish that betrayed practice. I wasn’t the first journalist to visit him at the Swansea house of his friend Stuart Thomas, nor the first to sink into the amorphous couch against the wall while Amis commanded the center of the room in a straight-backed chair, the picture of diffidence. Nor, I think, was I the first he had taunted with intimations of sloth and stupidity. Amis carefully cultivated his reputation as a tough interview.