The Angry Young Men

A Literary Comedy of the 1950s.

There may be more important literary movements than 'The Angry Young Men' but there can be few as entertaining.

Humphrey Carpenter's extremely funny new book celebrates the strange group of varying talents, including John Osborne, Colin Wilson, John Braine, Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin, who at different times were believed to be angry young men (a label sometimes also rather oddly attached to Iris Murdoch and Doris Lessing).

The world of 'Lucky Jim', 'The Less Deceived', 'Look Back in Anger', 'Hurry on Down', 'Room at the Top' and 'The Outsider' left behind both enduring works and sometimes terrible nonsense.

This cavalcade of misunderstandings, wild statements, mediocrity and genuine achievement was an almost perfect example of how the media both boosts and wrecks literary endeavour, Carpenter tells with great relish the story of how that world came into being - and how it all too quickly fell apart.