Penguin Modern Classics

''A brilliantly and preposterously funny book'' Guardian

''A flawless comic novel ... I loved it then, as I do now. It has always made me laugh out loud'' Helen Dunmore, The Times

Jim Dixon has accidentally fallen into a job at one of Britain''s new red brick universities. A moderately successful future in the History Department beckons - as long as Jim can stave off the unwelcome advances of fellow lecturer Margaret, survive a madrigal-singing weekend at Professor Welch''s, deliver a lecture on ''Merrie England'' and resist Christine, the hopelessly desirable girlfriend of Welch''s awful son Bertrand. Inspired by Amis''s friend, the poet Philip Larkin, Jim Dixon is a timeless comic character, adrift in a hopelessly gauche and pretentious world, in a witty campus novel that skewers the hypocrisies and vanities of 1950s academic life.

With an introduction by David Lodge