Words At Large

This week, Writers & Company takes a look at the private side of a writer who’s long been in the public eye as “the bad boy of British letters,” as one critic put it. In part two of Eleanor Wachtel’s interview with Martin Amis, he talks about family, from his new daughters and a long-lost daughter to his famous father, and his decision to write about them in his candid memoir, Experience (Vintage Books).

Amis has enjoyed considerable success, but he’s also dealt with personal loss: the death of his father and his younger sister, the end of his first marriage, and the discovery that his cousin, who had gone missing in 1973, was a victim of serial killer Frederick West.

Included in this week's podcast is an interview with his father, Kingsley Amis, from the early 1990s and readings by both men.

Listen to these conversations here:

First aired February 4, 2007 on Writers & Company. [runs 52:49]

Through the summer, different episodes of Writers & Company will air on Sundays and Thursdays. On July 10, listen to an interview with Pulitzer prize-winning playwright, Tony Kushner. They talk about his personal chamber opera about growing up in the south and his epic Angels in America.