In 1969, Anthony Burgess started a month-long residency at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It was an important period for Burgess in many way, giving him his first experience of the American campus, and developing the American influence on novels such as MF and Earthly Powers. While at Chapel Hill, he met a graduate student called Ben Forkner, who was tasked with showing the Burgess family around the university and the surrounding area. The two men quickly became friends, bonding over their shared love of Irish literature, in particular the work of James Joyce. They remained friends until Burgess’s death in 1993.

In this podcast episode, Forkner shares some of his memories of Burgess both in Chapel Hill and France, where he moved in the early 1970s. Forkner spoke to us over the telephone from his home in Angers in December 2024, and clips of that interview are included in this episode along with readings from his introduction to One Man’s Chorus, an edited collection of Burgess’s journalism, and a recording of Burgess reading the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, which Forkner has donated to the archives at the Burgess Foundation.

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