Among the author's life long friends was the poet Philip Larkin, whom Amis befriended because they were "savagely uninterested in the same things."
Lucky Jim (1954) - central character is the antihero Jim Dixon, a junior faculty member at a small university, who faces one disaster after another with his girlfriend and professor. Dixon's job is in constant danger, often for good reason. He despises the pretensions of academic life, but his ambitious plans to improve his situation are fruitless, because the class distinctions are unbreakable. - see also Odili from Chunua Achebe's novel A Man of the People (1966).