Born on August 25, 1949 in Oxford, England, where his father, the well-known Booker Prize winning author, Kingsley Amis, was a doctoral student, Martin Amis spent his early years in Swansea (Southern Wales) where his father taught. He later spent a year at Princeton, where again his father taught, before returning to England and settling in Cambridge. At the age of twelve his parents divorced, and Amis spent the following year on the Balearic island of Majorca, Spain, with his mother, brother and sister. The following year he returned to England, where he received a role in a film entitled A High Wind in Jamaica, but was subsequently not allowed to return to school. He completed his schooling through a series of "crammers" (intensive tutoring schools), but seemed to show little promise. One headmaster even declared Amis was "unusually unpromising."

After his stepmother, the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard, introduced him to the works of Jane Austen, he began preparing for Oxford University's entrance requirements. In 1968, he entered Oxford's Exeter College, and three years later graduated with a degree in English with first-class honors (the highest classification in the British university system). He then received a position as book reviewer for the London Observer in 1971, and then held a series of editorial positions over the next eight years, for such publications as the London Times Literary Supplement, the New Statesman, and the London Observer, where he has held the position of special writer since 1980.

A couple of recurring themes in the fictional works of Amis are: the bipolar presentation of two contrasting characters, of which one is successful and discovers his success is an illusion, while the loutish opposite prevails; and the awakening of a character from a "death" which leads to a relearning process and an alternate look at the world.

Amis has been married to Antonia Phillips since 1984 and has two sons. He enjoys darts, tennis, snooker, and pinball.

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