Lucky Jim: Kingsley Amis

Jim Dixon has accidentally fallen into a job at one of Britain`s new red brick universities. A moderately successful future in the History Department beckons - as long as Jim can stave off the unwelcome advances of fellow lecturer Margaret, survive a madrigal-singing weekend at Professor Welch`s, deliver a lecture on `Merrie England` and resist Christine, the hopelessly desirable girlfriend of Welch`s awful son Bertrand. Inspired by Amis`s friend, the poet Philip Larkin, Jim Dixon is a timeless comic character, adrift in a hopelessly gauche and pretentious world, in a witty campus novel that skewers the hypocrisies and vanities of 1950s academic life.