1. A Clockwork Orange was not the original title of the novel. In Anthony Burgess’s diary for 1958, he begins a plan for the novel that would eventually become A Clockwork Orange. It appears he originally intended the novel to be titled The Plank in Your Eye, an allusion to Matthew’s Gospel. During the Sermon […]

ONE: He received a fan letter from Umberto Eco. They met when Burgess was living in Rome in the early 1970s. Eco, who worked as a radio producer, interviewed Burgess in connection with Joysprick, a book about the language of James Joyce. Later on, Burgess wrote favourable reviews of a number of Eco’s books, including The […]

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 […]