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MARTIN Amis is said to have once boasted that he never opens his bank statements. But if the novelist has since had a change of heart and checked his balance, he may be delighted to learn that he is earning close to £3,000-an-hour in his role as a professor of creative writing at the University of Manchester. Amis, 58, was appointed last February as part of a £10m drive by the university to become one of the world’s top educational establishments by 2015. He is committed to working for 28 hours a year in this role, outside of his writing and research duties as a professor. This work earns him a salary of £80,000, according to the Manchester Evening News (MEN), which discovered the details of his salary using the Freedom of Information Act. Amis holds 90-minute seminars for postgraduate students over 12 weeks, amounting to a grand total of 18 hours. For the remaining 10 hours, he is contracted to take part in four public events, as well as teaching at a summer school. Last November, the university reduced staff numbers with 600 voluntary redundancies, but a statement defended Amis’s appointment, saying that there had been a 50 per cent rise in applications for the creative writing course, from 100 to 150, since the writer joined. Responding to the news of Amis’s salary, Dave Jones, the senior Unite union organiser who represents 600 staff at the university, told the MEN: "We understand why people like Martin Amis are being sought by the university, and recruitment is a competitive business. But I think those staff who are left after the various redundancies and early retirements need to know that there will also be investment into their careers as well, along with the new structure of the university." The author, who lives in London and commutes to Manchester, declined to comment. Speaking about his appointment, he predicted that the experience may inspire him to write a new book — By arrangement with The Independent
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