Professor Eagleton Is “a Little Squirt,” says Sir Kingsley Amis’ Brother-in-Law
THE TELEGRAPH: The family of the late Sir Kingsley Amis has rallied to his defence after he was accused of being "a racist, anti-Semitic boor, a drink-sodden, self-hating reviler of women, gays and liberals", by Marxist intellectual Terry Eagleton.

Colin Howard, the homosexual brother-in-law of Sir Kingsley, has called Prof Eagleton "a little squirt" and said that the novelist, far from being homophobic, had extended an affectionate friendship to him and helped him come to terms with his sexuality.

In a letter to The Daily Telegraph published today, Mr Howard says: "I can assure Professor Eagleton that he is at the least, careless in his description of Kingsley as homophobic. Calling him anti-semitic should be actionable if it was not so absurd."

His sister, the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard, Sir Kingsley's second wife, writes in another letter: "Kingsley was never a racist, nor an anti-Semitic boor. Our four great friends who witnessed our wedding were three Jews and one homosexual. Family defends 'racist' Sir Kingsley Amis (more) By Lucy Cockcroft

Terry Eagleton: Why I rebuked Amis for his obnoxious views

Mark Alexander

Prof Eagleton, the Marxist Who Just Doesn’t Get It, Engages in an Ad Hominem Attack on Martin Amis to Try and Prove His Point
Martin Amis under attack by the Marxist Professor Eagleton
THE TELEGRAPH: A battle has broken out between two of the country's literary titans with one, the prominent Marxist intellectual Terry Eagleton, accusing the other, the novelist Martin Amis, of being Islamophobic.

Prof Eagleton says that Amis has abandoned traditional Western values of liberalism following the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centre. 

In an introduction to the 2007 edition of his classic book, Ideology: An Introduction, Prof Eagleton attacks the views of "Amis and his ilk" for taking up cudgels against Islam instead of propounding tolerance and understanding.

The attack also extends to Amis's novelist father, the late Kingsley Amis.

Prof Eagleton calls Kingsley Amis "a racist, anti-Semitic boor, a drink-sodden, selfhating reviler of women, gays and liberals".

He adds: "Amis fils has clearly learnt more from him than how to turn a shapely phrase".

Prof Eagleton, a Marxist literary critic for 30 years, has increasingly turned his pen against Left-leaning writers for selling out to the Establishment, but his new introduction reserves special scorn for Amis Jnr, the author of novels such as London Fields and Money.

The spark is a controversial essay written by Amis last year, the day before the fifth anniversary of the bombing of New York's Twin Towers, in which he said that "the Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order".

In The Age of Horrorism, Amis argued that fundamentalists had won the battle between Islam and Islamism.

The novelist suggested "strip-searching people who look like they're from the Middle East or from Pakistan", preventing Muslims from travelling, and further down the road, deportation. Martin Amis essay 'like work of BNP thug' (more) By Nigel Reynolds, Arts Correspondent

Mark Alexander