Martin Amis at 60

1956: The Amis clan. Martin Amis's father, the novelist and poet Sir Kingsley Amis, presides over a family snapshot with his wife, Hilary, and their children Sally, Philip (far left) and Martin (right) outside their house in Swansea Photograph: Daniel Farson/Hulton Archive

1956: A seven-year-old Martin Amis shows early signs of following in his father's footsteps, picking up the tools of his eventual profession Photograph: Daniel Farson/Getty Images

1977: A 28-year-old Amis, during his stint as literary editor of the New Statesmen. An early starter, by his late-20s, Amis had already published two novels: the semi-autobiographical The Rachel Papers which won critical acclaim (it was awarded the Somerset Maugham award) in 1973, and Dead Babies in 1975 Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty

1985: A portrait of the author at his home in London, the year after the publication of one of his best-known and most admired novels, Money. The story of the descent of ad man and self-destructive hedonist John Self was described in the New York Times review as "special and important ... like a tale taken down in a trance by a medium in the grip of a spirit control, one of those prankish controls waxing autobiographical from a spectral barstool" Photograph: Sahm Doherty/Getty Images

1990: The opening of the 90s saw Amis writing at the peak of his powers. London Fields, widely regarded as his masterpiece, had been published to rave reviews the year before. In this photograph he is working at the typewriter in his study on his next novel, the technically audacious Time's Arrow, which would come out the following year ... Photograph: Ian Cook/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

1990: ... which made his ongoing quest for the perfect backhand all the more impressive Photograph: Ian Cook/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Image

1995: Kingsley Amis and Martin Amis at a literary dinner in London (Kingsley died later that year). The relationship between the two novelists was affectionate but complex: Amis senior was famously caustic about his son's work, saying of Money, "He has a terrible, compulsive vividness in his style ... Breaking the rules, buggering about with the reader, drawing attention to himself" Photograph: Dave M. Benett/Getty Images

1995: Amis with Salman Rushdie at the 1995 British Book awards (Rushdie was named Author of the Year for The Moor's Last Sigh, beating the third novel in Amis's London trilogy, The Information). The friendship between the authors spans several decades (they were part of a wider group of British writers that also included Julian Barnes and Ian McEwan) and led Rushdie to come to his friend's defence when Amis came under fire for his controversial comments on Islam in a 2006 essay Photograph: Dave M. Benett/Getty Images

2001: Martin Amis at the Edinburgh literary festival in 2001 Photograph: Murdo Macleod

2003: Amis with his wife, the author Isabel Fonseca, and their two daughters. Amis also had two sons with his first wife, the American academic Antonia Phillips Photograph: Dave Benett/Getty Images Europe

2003: Amis on a London rooftop in 2003, the year he published Yellow Dog. Reactions to the novel were critical ("It's like your favourite uncle being caught in a school playground, masturbating" said Tibor Fischer in his review in the Telegraph); shortly afterwards, Amis and Fonseca moved with their daughters to Uruguay for two years Photograph: Erica Berger/Corbis

2007: By 2007, however, after the 2006 publication of House of Meetings, which garnered far more positive reviews, Amis was back on British soil Photograph: Richard Saker

2007: Amis's study, photographed for the Guardian's series on writers' rooms. "I used to have the attic and Isabel was meant to have this office, but I didn't think she used it enough so I reclaimed it," he said. "It's ideal - you can't hear the children and you can smoke" Photograph: Eamonn McCabe

2009: Amis at one of his most recent appearances at the LRB Bookshop, at an event based on Zachary Leader's collection of essays, The Movement Reconsidered: Larkin, Amis, Gunn, Davie and Their Contemporaries Photograph: Rex Features