Never performed or heard in the UK, Burgess’s Oedipus the King is a robust and powerful version of Sophocles’s classic text. The drama includes an invented language that Burgess created especially for the 1972 production of the piece at the Tyrone Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, USA. This has been preserved in the International Anthony Burgess […]
Anthony Burgess had a close relationship with classical music – not only did it influence his novels, but he also wrote his own music. On the centenary of his birth, Burgess’s biographer and director of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, Andrew Biswell, presents music that inspired him, including pieces by Beethoven, Walton and Constant Lambert. […]
Five writers, some of whom knew him in person, explore Burgess’s life and reflect on their favourite Burgess works, exploring the extraordinary twentieth-century man of letters from different angles. The Essay: Burgess at 100 offers personal as well as critical insight into why he remains a literary figure of such importance. These essays look beyond […]
The International Anthony Burgess Foundation and the Observer newspaper are delighted to announce the winners of the latest Observer / Anthony Burgess Prizes for Arts Journalism, who were unveiled at a special event at King’s Place, London on Thursday 23 February. Judges Robert McCrum (Associate Editor), Sarah Donaldson (Arts Editor) and Andrew Biswell (Director, International Anthony Burgess Foundation) welcomed […]
ONE: He wrote books under three different names. Born John Burgess Wilson in 1917, he adopted the pen-name ‘Anthony Burgess’ in 1956, when he published his first novel, Time for a Tiger. He also published two books as Joseph Kell, and a volume of literary history as John Burgess Wilson. He wanted to publish his […]
Our new exhibition examines Anthony Burgess’s experiences in Malaya in the 1950s, where he worked as a teacher at the Malay College in Kuala Kangsar and at the Malayan Teachers’ Training College at Kota Bharu in the district of Kelantan. As a fluent speaker of Malay and Chinese, Burgess was able to experience the […]
The actual Observer / Anthony Burgess Arts Journalism prize is an elegant thing of modernist beauty — a clear Perspex block, small and neat, stamped with the picture of a stylish black typewriter. It is, charmingly, modelled after an arts journalism prize once won by Burgess himself (this detail tells something of the care with […]
Being awarded the Observer/Anthony Burgess Prize was an unbelievable privilege. Apart from being published in the Observer and the cash prize (which I put towards research trips for future writing), it was an invaluable insight into newspapers’ commissioning processes. I’m very grateful for the contact and guidance I’ve had since. It was a pleasure to […]
What makes good criticism? It’s a big question, especially in this age where there are more critics than ever. Specialist blogs proliferate; anyone with a social media handle can review the latest films, novels, albums, plates of food…. Firstly, it’s important to separate general cultural criticism from academic criticism. The latter is deep-delving, forensically detailed. […]
I am delighted to be judging the Anthony Burgess prize. At a time when the arts pages in many of our newspapers are under threat, it seems doubly important to celebrate the role of arts journalism both as a necessary tool in enabling the circulation of books, pictures and films and as an art form […]