You know the sort of thing that’s going to happen to me? With my teeth even worse than they are (I have had gingivitis for some time) dressing in camel-hair waistcoat and bow-ties, I shall be laughing and talking loudly in the pubs at lunch-time, imagining I am impressing the young men by my keen contemporaneity, passing myself off as a grand chap, referring to my successful friends… . All this of course will be taking place in one of the smaller and poorer provincial cities.
Casual dismissal of bow ties in a letter from Kingsley Amis to Philip Larkin, 1951.
