Sir Kingsley Amis was subject of MI5

Sir Kingsley Amis was placed under MI5 “observation” while in the Army at the end of the Second World War because of concerns over his left-wing political views, newly released documents reveal.

The prolific writer was the subject of Security Service suspicion just days after VE Day, while a lieutenant in the Royal Corps of Signals, his declassified file revealed on Tuesday. The Lucky Jim writer and father of novelist Martin Amis was already known by MI5 to have joined the Communist Party as an Oxford student and had been logged as a “recipient of Communist literature” after being called up, documents released by the National Archive show.

But there was a flurry of notes and letters about him after the war ended, at a time when the Intelligence Services were shifting their focus away from defeated Nazi Germany and towards their former Soviet Union allies.

A memo regarding Amis, dated May 13 1945, five days after VE Day, reported: “This officer came to notice in 1942 (as) a student at Oxford University when he was reported to be a very promising member of the Oxford Branch of the Communist Party.

“Since being in the Army and in BLA (British Libera-