Amis novel ponders past loves

Martin Amis's forthcoming novel, The Pregnant Widow, is said to be causing a ripple of unease amongst his former girlfriends. Why? According to the Daily Mail, the 59-year-old writer has confided to friends that the book, which is due out in the autumn, is "loosely autobiographical" and features characters and scenes based on his past romantic conquests.

"His father [Kingsley Amis] often based his female characters on people that he knew, sometimes using those he had affairs with, and it often made uncomfortable reading," says a literary source. "Given that Martin has often been accused of sexism in his books, I should think a lot of his former loves might have something to worry about. It's bound to provoke a guessing game in the media."

Those who may have something to fear include Julie Kavanagh, who wrote a well-regarded biography of choreographer Sir Frederick Ashton, Emmas Soames, who is Sir Winston Churchill's granddaughter, Mary Furness, the philosopher, and Tina Brown (pictured), the former editor of Vanity Fair, who is now married to Sir Harold Evans.

Meanwhile, some of those former loves can be seen in an exhibition of photographs capturing the heyday of Martin Amis and his contemporaries, among them the US-based political writer and polemicist Christopher Hitchens and the poet James Fenton, at the National Portrait Gallery, beginning 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.