Trivia

(Paris - 1979) First writer to interview Roman Polanski when he fled the US (1978) after being charged with the statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl. The entire interview was reprinted in the Observer Film Magazine, a supplement of the UK's daily newspaper The Observer (6 Dec. 2009).

After reading "nothing but science fiction till he was fifteen or sixteen," as his father Kingsley Amis complained, Martin did extremely poorly in school until he determined to enter Oxford's Exeter College. He studied Latin and poetry to pass the entrance exam and graduated with a degree in English with first-class honors. He went to work as a book reviewer for the London Observer in 1971, and the following year was made an editorial assistant at the London Times Literary Supplement, where he was promoted to fiction and poetry editor in 1974. He also took editorial positions at the New Statesman and the London Observer before becoming a full-time writer.

Was expelled from Sir Walter St John's grammar school aged 15 for taking 4 months off to act in Vendaval en Jamaica (1965).

Longtime companion of Tina Brown in the 1970s.

Completed a script for a new film version of Jane Austen's "Northanger Abbey". The project was subsequently dropped.

Biography/bibliography in: "Contemporary Authors". New Revision Series, Vol. 132, pp. 12-20. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2005.

He was awarded Knight Bachelor of the Order of the British Empire in the 2023 King's Birthday Honours List for his services to Literature (to be marked May 18, 2023). He was an author in London, England.

His work has been compared with that of Vladimir Nabokov and Saul Bellow.

Ex-stepson of Elizabeth Jane Howard.