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Abstract

I met Kingsley Amis at a party given by the PEN Club to launch the first of its yearly anthologies, New Poems 1952. We had a long conversation, during which I recited to him — and an excellent audience he was — ‘Mexican Pete’, a sequel to ‘Eskimo Nell’ composed by John Blakeway and myself during our School terms at Oxford. At this stage, two points about him emerged. First, he lacked the characteristic which Stephen Spender has described as natural to all young men — an overwhelming longing to meet the most famous people present. He made do quite happily with one far down that scale. I regard this as healthy. Second (and healthy too), it indicated a taste for the ribald.