Anthony Burgess used typewriters all his life in his spectacular production of more than sixty books and thousands of articles, reviews and essays. Our new exhibition, ‘Anthony Burgess’s Typewriters’, displays a selection of the many vintage typewriters that he used, and explores some of his writing about the machine that was always present in his […]
In the second part of our podcast exploration of A Clockwork Orange’s life on the stage (listen to the previous podcast episode here), Will Carr from the Burgess Foundation speaks to director Alexandra Spencer-Jones and actor Martin McCreadie, the creative forces behind Action to the Word’s powerful version of Burgess’s story. This innovative all-male production […]
A Clockwork Orange on Stage is a new exhibition by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation that pays tribute to the amazing work of theatres and theatre-makers worldwide in presenting Anthony Burgess’s most famous novel in performance. The online exhibition showcases images from theatrical adaptations of A Clockwork Orange in many styles and many countries. You’ll […]
New research into the Foundation’s archive of literary manuscripts has uncovered a number of previously unknown poems and songs by Anthony Burgess. To celebrate the 104th anniversary of Burgess’s birth on 25 February 2021, and the US publication of Collected Poems on the same date, we are presenting one of the new poems here. ‘A […]
Our exhibition Anthony Burgess on Tape explores the audio collections at the Burgess Foundation. Some tapes include Anthony Burgess playing the piano, his favourite instrument. We investigate further. Anthony Burgess’s love for the piano was deep rooted. Burgess believed he had a musical background. His mother Elizabeth was (according to family legend) a singer and […]
The audio archive at the Burgess Foundation comprises 1,094 cassettes and 87 reel-to-reel tapes. The recordings run to over a thousand hours, and include interviews with the media, public lectures, private telephone conversations, piano playing and poetry reading at home, domestic discussions, and sometimes street noises and birdsong. Other tapes contain classical music, obscure radio programmes, […]
We take a look at a bust of Anthony Burgess held in our collections and featured on the front cover of his biographies. Our gallery at the Engine House is currently closed, but when it reopens there will be an opportunity to view an item never before displayed in public: a bust of Anthony Burgess […]
We turn our focus to numerous photographs taken by Liana Burgess, held here at the Burgess Foundation, and how they provide a revealing record of the life of Anthony Burgess. Liana Burgess was a keen and prolific amateur photographer. Using an Asahi Pentax SP1000 from the mid-1960s, her images make up a large part of […]
Anthony Burgess came of age as modernism was approaching its peak, and the movement influenced much of his writing and music. As a young man, Burgess was inspired by writers such as James Joyce and T.S. Eliot; and, as a musician, he was excited by the revolutionary compositions of Stravinsky, Berg, Honneger and Mossolov. Reacting […]
Our new exhibition, Cartomancy: Anthony Burgess and the Tarot, is now open at the Engine House. Anthony Burgess was fascinated by the possibility of predicting the future. Drawing on previously unseen material from the Burgess Foundation collections, this exhibition explores Anthony Burgess’s creative relationship with dreams, horoscopes – and the mysteries of the Tarot. Burgess owned several […]