In the novel “A Girl of Twenty,” Sir Kingsley Amis (1922–1995), a former notorious brawler and author of the hilarious satire “Lucky Jim,” tells the story of the love of the famous and by no means young composer and conductor Sir Roger Vandervein - and the wild “ hippo girl” who is old enough to be his daughter. The respectable gentleman recklessly sacrifices his reputation as a respectable man in the street, abandons his family and exposes himself to the blows of the father of his young passion, who, also being an all-powerful newspaper magnate, strives in every possible way to prevent the misalliance. The panorama of “swinging London” is seen from the other side of the barricades, through the eyes of a music critic, esthete and snob, nostalgically recalling the times when “Sir Roger still allowed himself to speak negatively about the Soviet Union and rock and roll”...