Declassified papers reveal how, at the end of WWII, writer Sir Kingsley Amis, then an Army lieutenant, attracted the attention of security forces over his left-wing views. David Wilcock takes a closer look
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, documents released today 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 reveals.
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 SIR Kingsley Amis wrote the award-winning novel Lucky Jim during his time at The Grove in Uplands, Swansea.
He also wrote That Uncertain Feeling which was turned into a Swansea-set movie starring Peter Sellers and Mai Zetterling.
Sir Kingsley was a lecturer at Swansea University for 12 years until 1961.
At their first Swansea home in Vivian Road, Sketty, their writer son 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 Liberation Army) he is known to have been in touch with the Headquarters of (Communist party newspaper) the Daily Worker and it is therefore reasonable to suppose that his political views have not changed in any way.”
The letter suggested getting a report from Amis’ commanding officer (CO) about him, and in a memo to MI5’s Lt Col John Baskervyle-Glegg, the unnamed CO said he had not found the socialist young officer to have a “particularly inspiring personality”.
He added: “He is obviously wellread, but a bit young and inexperienced in the ways of the world.
‘MOST AT HOME IN SWANSEA’
Martin, now a 65-year-old novelist, then a toddler, had to “sleep in a drawer” because Kingsley Amis and his wife Hilly could not afford a cot.
But Sir Kingsley came to think of his days in Swansea as among his happiest and he would often visit Swansea when his London club, The Garrick, was closed for the summer.
He would later refer to Swansea as “a place of earth I know best, better than any part of London and the place I feel most at home in”.
“In discussions he has always tended to take extremist views towards most aspects of life and gives the impression of trying to compensate for his rather nebulous personality by making extreme and controversial statements in the hope it will make an impression.”
He added that Amis’ immediate company commander did not report him showing “extremist tendencies” in his work, adding: “My own view is that if he tried to there are few people who would take him seriously.”
However, a subsequent letter from Baskervyle-Glegg on July 4 that year noted: “I am interested in what the CO (commanding officer) has to say about this officer, particularly as it tends to confirm what we already knew about him.
“There seems to be little doubt that his left-wing opinions have not changed to any extent since he first came to notice, and I accordingly think that he should remain under observation for the time being.”
The file notes that Amis was demobilised from the Army the following October.
After the war he returned to Oxford and was very politically active, never hiding the fact that he was a socialist.
His file shows that his MI5 file and vetting led to him losing a position on a lecture tour in 1955, organised by the German Information department at the Foreign Office.
But it also catalogued how his politics softened in the 1950s, particularly after the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary.
In February 1957 he wrote in the Daily Worker, later renamed the Morning Star, that he had “utterly rejected” Marxism.
He had become a lecturer at the University of Wales in Swansea after Cambridge in 1949, before getting his literary breakthrough in 1954 with Lucky Jim.
He became a fellow at Peterhouse College, Cambridge, in 1961 but quit in 1963 in protest at the restrictive atmosphere. Since then his prolific output of novels, essays and poems gained him a devoted and massive readership.
His politics later veered further to the right and he developed a reputation as an irascible old man with a weakness for hard drinking and a relish for misogyny.
He was knighted in 1990 and died in 1995 at the age of 73.
In 1964 he left his wife Hilary and their three children and eloped to Spain with the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard. They were married from 1965 to 1980.
What appears to be a dry reference to his penchant for infidelity appears in a note from 1955, when he was in Swansea.
The memo, from the local police to MI5, noted: “Resides with his wife Hilary and children ... at No 24 The Grove, Uplands, Swansea.
“Amis is known to be friendly with Mrs Margaret Aeron Thomas, who often visits his home.”