Lucky Jim today

When Martin Amis went up to the University of Oxford at the end of the 1960s, he discovered that his unrepentant, iconoclastic intellectualism was both fantastically attractive to female students and lauded by professors. Amis – thrilled – was awarded a congratulatory first. But the late novelist wouldn’t be so well received today.

Instead, as a writer who fearlessly interrogated the pieties of modern culture, he may have found himself abhorred by his fellow students, many of whom profess themselves too delicate to entertain the prospect of encountering a viewpoint different to their own, let alone to endure the “trauma” of hearing it. And rather than being applauded for challenging the creeping authoritarianism that accompanies sanctimonious social groupthink, he would be at best abandoned, at worst hounded out.

Such is the fate of Dr Kathleen Stock, who has faced pillory and worse after being invited to speak at the Oxford Union. Dr Stock’s crime is to insist on the biological differences between men and women. This has stoked the horror of university activists who claim that “the union is disregarding the welfare of its LGBTQ+ members under the guise of free speech”. Her experience is echoed elsewhere as institutions which are supposed to be dedicated to broadening young minds pander to those who would rather not be exposed to debate.

Universities must rediscover the spirit of radical questioning that Amis and his generation espoused – or ossify and die. Lucky Jim, the seminal campus novel by Martin’s father Kingsley, brilliantly lampoons the mores of bored 1950s academics. Our age desperately needs its own version. Today’s censors would be its target.