From 1963 to 1968 Anthony Burgess was an occasional television critic for the Listener. The majority of his published reviews were of documentaries, but towards the end of his tenure he also reviewed some television drama, including The Prisoner, the classic series which blends the tropes of James Bond secret agents with those of science fiction. […]
On December 7th, we welcome Manchester’s No Dice Collective as they team up with The Writing Squad for an end-of-the-world themed concert called Last Christmas especially commissioned by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation. Taking inspiration from the Burgess Foundation’s #FutureFictions season about all things apocalyptic, Last Christmas features music and spoken word by some of […]
Anthony Burgess was just ten years old when he saw Fritz Lang’s groundbreaking fantasy Metropolis on its release in Manchester in 1927. This, combined with his experience of the celebrated total eclipse of the sun in the same year, left a profound impression on him. Burgess remained fascinated by science fiction throughout his life. Burgess […]
The Observer / Burgess prize is back, and is open to anyone internationally who has an interest in reviewing the arts. We set up this prize in partnership with The Observer newspaper to provide writers with a chance to take the next step in their career, and to champion the very best new critical writing. Anthony […]
Beard’s Roman Women is an odd book. The title, changed by the American publisher from Rome in the Rain, seems to suggest a historical novel, set in the Roman Empire. The text is partnered with strange photographs of ghostly Roman monuments, reflected in puddles and in glass. The story is clearly autobiographical yet is told […]
The Irwell Edition of the Works of Anthony Burgess, published in hardback by Manchester University Press, is a new series which aims to bring all of Burgess’s novels and non-fiction books back into print. Each volume contains an editor’s introduction, a newly edited text, extensive notes and annotations, plus previously unpublished materials drawn from the […]
‘The history of England, from the time of the Roman occupation until twenty years ago, has been about the insistence of a very insular people on cutting itself off from that huge and dangerous continent that lies to its east and is separated by a mere twenty miles of sea’ (Anthony Burgess, ‘England in Europe’, […]
Sir Vidia Naipaul, who has died at the age of 85, was one of the foremost English-language writers of the late twentieth century. A novelist, memoirist and travel writer, he scoured the globe in search of resonant stories, which he told in a variety of different narrative forms. Born into an Indian family at Chaguanas […]
We are very sad to learn that the writer Geoffrey Aggeler has died in Santa Barbara at the age of 78. Professor Aggeler was a central figure in the first generation of Burgess scholarship. He was the author of Anthony Burgess: The Artist as Novelist (1979) and editor of Critical Essays on Anthony Burgess (1986). […]
In the final months of 1985, to mark the 300th anniversary of Bach’s birth, Burgess wrote the Bad-Tempered Electronic Keyboard, a modern tribute to Bach’s esteemed and influential Well-Tempered Clavier. Both compositions consist of 24 preludes and fugues, one for every major and minor key. Burgess stands in a long tradition of composing music in […]