Martin Amis – a chronicler of social decay

Martin Amis, the novelist wunderkind of the 1970s/80s – ‘the Mick Jagger of fiction’ – son of the equally celebrated Kingsley Amis has died aged 73, ironically at the same age as his father and of the same cancer that carried off his best friend Christopher Hitchens a decade ago. He was above all else a wordsmith with a supreme talent for illuminating the underbelly of society in bleak, black comedy.  He was born 25 August 1949, no birth time, and had a fractured upb