NEWS AND BLOG POSTS

Inside Anthony Burgess: Tremor of Intent

Graham Foster
7th October 2026

category
Blog Posts

Inside Anthony Burgess is a podcast exploring the imaginative world of the author of A Clockwork Orange and 32 other novels.

Each episode will feature one of Burgess’s books, taking in both his fiction and his non-fiction. Among other subjects, we will discuss the origins of each work, its themes and its literary techniques.

Tremor of Intent, published in 1966, is partly a Cold War espionage thriller, partly a critique of the novels of Ian Fleming and John le Carré, and partly an examination of the nature of good and evil. After many years as a field agent in the British intelligence service, Denis Hillier is past his best. His body is scarred and his tradecraft skills have softened. His final mission sends him on a gastronomic cruise ship to a destination in Crimea, where he must kidnap and retrieve an old school friend, a rocket scientist who has gone over to the Soviets. But the other passengers travelling on the ship may not be everything they seem to be.

Is Tremor of Intent more than an attempt to write a parodic James Bond novel? Andrew Biswell and Graham Foster try to crack the codes in this strange, exciting and unexpected novel.