Amis, Hitchens and Larkin: bad behaviour and a messy personal life were once a gift for authors. Not any more | Martha Gill

Flaws used to feed their sales but now writers are expected to be saints

As you get older you realise that all these things - prizes, reviews, advances, readers - it's all showbiz, and the real action starts with your obituary."

Martin Amis first started spinning in favour of his future obituarists in 2003 - at the juncture, post Yellow Dog, at which prizes, reviews, advances and readers began to turn against him. He knew how things would play out. After two decades of the literary world quiet quitting Martin Amis, there has been a sudden rehabilitation. In the past week the pages of obituary sections have exploded with a strangely pre-2003 phenomenon - a semi-tolerant fascination with Amis's personal life, and the way it may have bled into his work, and vice versa.

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