Published: 8:57AM GMT 20 Feb 2010
Martin Amis has come under attack from former BBC newsreader Anna Ford Photo: RICHARD SAKER Ms Ford, who is currently employed as a non-executive director of the supermarket chain J Sainsbury, has accused the author of being a narcissist and a whinger.
The attack came in an open letter to the Guardian following an article by Mr Amis in the paper"s Review section, in which he accused newspapers of constantly misrepresenting his views on women and euthanasia.
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Amis"s article, in last Saturday"s Guardian Review, argued that far from "stirring up the press" by being "controversial-on-purpose" whenever he has a new book out, his latest, The Pregnant Widow, was published this month, it is newspapers that stir themselves up by misrepresenting him.
Recent headlines such as "Martin Amis: "Women have too much power for their own good"" and "Amis calls for euthanasia booths on street corners" were, he said, essentially down to the media"s own "chaotic perceptions", based in at least one instance on "a mishmash of half-quotes".
Getting "taken up (and recklessly distorted) in the press is not something I do," he wrote . "It"s something the newspapers do. The only person who can manipulate the fourth estate is Katie Price."
Ms Ford, who has known Amis for more than 30 years, admitted that "as a feminist I don"t enjoy reading him; he may be one of our most distinguished writers, but I think his attitude to women is highly questionable.
"Obviously when you are an author you put your work into the public domain," she said.
"But Martin seems to think that having highly controversial views on a number of subjects nuclear warfare, Iraq, Muslims is not going to attract criticism.
"It seems to me that if you"re going to be a controversial writer, then you have to expect people to have an opinion about you, and you have to take the rough with the smooth. It"s this unattractive, immature whingeing that really gets me. He just ought to stop."
Ms Ford, who retired from television in 2006 after becoming ITN"s first woman newsreader and being part of the presenting team on the BBC Six O"Clock News, the Today programme and TV-am, is considerably harder on Amis in her letter, asking whether the author might not be better taking "a closer and more honest look at himself in relation to others" rather than "complaining about reckless distortions and chaotic perceptions".
She also relates two very personal anecdotes about her late husband, the cartoonist Mark Boxer, a close friend of Amis. Amis once visited Boxer in bed shortly before he died of a brain tumour in 1988 not just out of affection, Ford alleges, but because he was "filling in time before a plane".
The author subsequently wrote a piece in which he described crying as he left; tears of which Ford "saw no evidence".
She also says that when one of her two daughters was studying English at university reading Amis, she was unaware that he was her godfather.
"We invited you to lunch," Ford tells Amis. "You paid scant attention to Claire (didn"t even cough up the statutory five bob expected from godfathers!) and she hasn"t heard from you since.
"Can I suggest that this level of narcissism and inability to empathise may be at the root of your anger with the press and your need to court attention?"
Amis declined to comment on Ford"s letter, saying with some restraint that he would prefer to speak to her personally.
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