Age has done everything except mellow the characters in Kingsley Amis's late masterpiece <i>The Old Devils</i>, which turns its humane and ironic gaze on a group of Welsh married couples who have been spending their golden years—when “all of a sudden the evening starts starting after breakfast”—nattering, complaining, reminiscing, and above all, drinking. This more or less orderly social world is thrown off-kilter, however, when two old friends unexpectedly return from England: Alun Weaver, now a celebrated man of Welsh letters (but still, nevertheless, a “frightful shit”), and his entrancing wife, Rhiannon. Long-dormant rivalries and romances are rudely awakened, as life at the Bible and Crown, the characters' local watering hole, is changed irrevocably. <br>  <br> Winner of the 1986 Booker Prize, and considered by his son Martin to be Amis's greatest achievement—a book that “stands comparison with any English novel of the [twentieth] century (except of course <i>Ulysses</i>)”—<i>The Old Devils</i> combines the author's trademark wit and bile with an altogether less characteristic warmth. Few novels have described the physical and emotional attrition of ageing with the candor, sympathy, and moral intelligence that Amis brings to bear on his old devils.