The Amis career and the Amis dynasty : Lucky Jim

Another one of those novels whose name keeps coming up but which I've never read, till now: "Lucky Jim," by Kingsley Amis (his name kept alive by son Martin, with whom he's often compared, usually favorably). I've read little by Amis pere, though remember starting Stanley and the Women and definitely not finishing it, an old man's gripe I thought. Lucky Jim was, I think, his first novel, or at least his breakthrough. Looking back, it seems to have been one of the "bridge" novels - part the new postwar, angry-young-man Britain, full of promise and bitterness and verve, and part old-fashioned British academic novel, colleges and dons and proctors or whatever they call them. It harkened from the old world and appealed to the new. Reading it now, about 50 years after its publication, at least at the start, it's hard to discern the "new," it feels very old-time and quaint, and nevertheless sharp and funny. Begins with the two profs, Dixon young and ambitious and conniving, and Welch old and doddering but maybe still a bit sly - are these the two faces of Britain/British lit I mentioned above? - ambling across campus and later driving out to Welch's house for "tea." And there's some kind of unexplained so far sexual tension between them - Dixon seems to have had something going with Welch's wife? Not sure yet. I think the novel will probably be some kind of sexual romp - eyebrow-raising in 1954 but pretty tame today. Thank God. The writing seems very assured for a first-timer, and it must have been obvious to any reader that Amis was destined for a career, if not necessarily for a dynasty.