When Martin Amis isn’t writing novels (or playing tennis), the potent and reliably irascible éminence terrible of English letters is a lethal, laser-precise and very funny critic and commentator. A new collection of his non-fiction, The Rub of Time, picks up where 2001’s The War Against Cliché left off as he covers fame, fortune and fellow writers via literature, sport, friendship, royalty, pornography and politics (he’s good on easy target Trump, better on Romney: “is Mitt the kind of guy you’d like to have a glass of water with?”). Best, though, is Amis on other writers; the precision of his judgment on and praise of Vladimir Nabokov, JG Ballard and Don DeLillo is the sort of stuff you wish you’d read as a student (especially if it had been pouring out of your pen). As you’d expect, not a word is wasted. Amis won the war against cliché a long time ago – and the rub of time has been kind.