Novel by Kingsley Amis

First pulished in Great Britain 1954

I was 3 years old when Amis published this comic novel about Jim Dixon, a teacher at an un-named "new" red brick university. The name "red-brick" university denotes the facy that is neith Oxford nor Cambridge and thus has lower class education (how we love those distinguishing marks.)

The narrative describes how Jim has good prospects of making a good career in the English Department as long as he can overcome the challenges of weekends singing ancient madrigals at the home of his Head of Department Professor Welch. It is while staying at Welch's house that he burns the bed cothes because he smokes after getting drunk at the local pub. the best solution would ahve been to tell Welch what had happened. Butno, he attempts to make things better by cutting away the singed part of the bedding which makes an ever bigger whole.....and so on.

Towar the end of the novel Jim has to prepare for a lecture called "Merie England" and to do so must get up early.

"He didn't like having to breakfast so early.There was something about Miss Culter's cornflakes, her pallid fried eggs or bright red bacon, her explosive toast, her diuretic coffee which, much better than bearable at nine o'clock, his usual breakfast time, seemed at eight-fiteen to summon from all recesses of his frame every lingering vestige of crapulent headache, every relic of past nauseas, every echo of noises in the head. This retrospective vertigo collared him this morning as roughly as always. The tree pints of bitter he'd drunk last night with BillAtkinson and Beesley might, by means of some garbaged alley through the space time continuum, have been preceded by a bottle of British sherry and followed by half a dozen breakfast-cups of red biddy. Holding his hands over his eyes, he circled the table like one trying to evade the smoke from a bonfire , then sat down heavily and saturated a plate of cornflakes with bluish milk. He was alone in the room."

What a wonderful description of both living in "digs" (the British students lot in life in the 50's and 60's) and the effects of alcohol (which Amis would have known very well and very personally.

Although written a long time ago, this is an excellent read.

R.J.I.