The Old Devils

The Old Devils is a novel by the English writer Kingsley Amis, published in 1986. It won the Booker Prize, and it is set in Wales among a group of friends who have reached retirement.

Alun Weaver is a writer of modest celebrity, and he returns to the country he came from with his wife Rhiannon, who was a famous beauty when they were young. They move into a quiet retirement community and find it peopled by people they used to know.

Alun begins drinking every day in the pub with a group of former friends, among them Peter Thomas, who was once Rhiannon's boyfriend. As in several of Amis's novels, the characters and parts of the plot are drawn from people and experiences he knew: the poet Brydan in the book is a thinly disguised parody of Dylan Thomas, whom Amis met and disliked, and whose reputation he wrote about with contempt. The comedy is at the expense of the men themselves. The book belongs with Amis's other novels about people who drink heavily and talk about the past, and it is the one that won the prize.