The Independent: “There is something practically Shakespearean about the way in which this pitiless debunker of pompous, self-regarding old men became one himself, a process that was as much visual as behavioural. As Leader’s lavish photo-spreads confirm, late-period Amis – pop-eyed, wattled and damson-faced – bore an uncanny resemblance to his old sparring partner Evelyn Waugh. Reading the excerpts from for-God’s-sake letters lamenting the editorial treatment doled out to ‘a writer of my generation’, eavesdropping on the mid-morning gin-swiller whose defence was ‘Look, I’m Kingsley Amis, you see, and I can drink whenever I want,’ you wonder whether Waugh didn’t have the last laugh.”