I was never a rebel

It’s a hot and crowded afternoon in Manhattan. Martin Amis is in the New York Public Library, relaxing on a small purple sofa. He’s tired, but he takes the time to answer a few questions about his new novel Lionel Asbo about poetry, porn and modern Britain. 

Spectator: You grew up in 1960s Britain with all that rebellious rock ’n’ roll culture, but your father, Kingsley Amis, was part of the establishment and knighted to boot. How did you reconcile those worlds?

Amis: I was never a rebel. I mean not in my life, in my writing a bit, perhaps. My father was a communist when he was young. And by the time I was a teenager, he was an anti-­communist. So there was no question of being very left-wing. I had very left-wing friends, who were revolutionaries and were busy in Paris in 1968 turning cars upside down and throwing Molotov cocktails.