Martin Amis and friends captured in their pomp in new exhibition

An exhibition of photographs capturing the heyday of the novelist Martin Amis and his contemporaries, among them the US-based political writer and polemicist Christopher Hitchens and the poet James Fenton, goes on display at the National Portrait Gallery from Saturday, January 10.

Called Martin Amis and Friends, the pictures are the work of the author's former fiancee, Angela Gorgas, and record a time when Amis and his cronies dominated the London literary scene. The one of Amis featured here was taken in 1980, the year he published his breakthrough novel, Money.

Amis, Hitchens and Fenton were a tightly knit group. All born in 1949, they met at Oxford University and worked together at the New Statesman magazine during the late 1970s. Novelist Ian McEwan, another member of the gang, also features in a separate photograph which was taken in a Parisian cafe, having just finished eating breakfast with Amis.

"Going through the negatives was like an archeological dig," says Gorgas. "I had a real sense of the transience of time and wanting to capture a moment, to preserve these memories. Martin was already on the road to success. I knew that I was having a great time and I was with people who were intellectually stimulating and hugely creative. There was a buzz in the air."

Amis usually appears with a cigarette between his lips. "It was quite hard not to get him smoking," admits Gorgas. In one photo, he stands by his battered old white Mini. This car was known as The Ashtray as the interior overflowed with cigarette butts.

While captivating, there is a tragic aspect to the collection: one photo features Amschel Rothschild, a member of the Rothschild banking family who committed suicide at the Hotel Bristol in Paris in 1996.