Bill Nighy leads tributes as celebrities arrive at Sir Martin Amis’s memorial
Bill Nighy has lead tributes to the late author Sir Martin Amis at a service of remembrance.
One of the most significant British authors in the second half of the 20th century, Sir Martin died in 2023 aged 73 and was posthumously knighted for his services to literature.
Celebrities gathered to pay their respects at a service for the author of Money and Time’s Arrow. Among them were Anna Wintour, the Vogue editor, and David Gilmour, the Pink Floyd singer.
Nighy, a devotee of Sir Martin’s writing, delivered readings from his works at the service at St Martin-in-the-Fields in London.
Alongside Sir Martin’s children and widow, novelist Isabel Fonseca, the late author’s close friends and fellow writers Ian McEwan and James Fenton also attended.
Novelist Zadie Smith was set to contribute to the service, along with journalist Tina Brown, a romantic partner of Sir Martin during his time at Oxford.
Sir Salman Rushdie, a friend and novelist, did not attend but provided a written tribute, saying: “Only Martin sounded like Martin Amis, and it was unwise to try and imitate him.
“He used to say that what he wanted to do was leave behind a shelf of books – to be able to say ‘from here to here, it’s me’.
“His voice is silent now. His friends will miss him terribly. But at least we have the shelf.”
Sir Salman’s tribute noted that, in the literary sense, Sir Martin had three fathers: his own, the writer Kingsley Amis, as well as Vladimir Nabokov and Saul Bellow.
From his father, Sir Salman wrote, Sir Martin author learned comedy. From Russian novelist Nabokov, a “high intellectualism”, and from US author and long-time friend Bellow, a “reverence for style”.
