Inside Anthony Burgess is a podcast that explores the writing of the author of A Clockwork Orange. Taking in both his fiction and non-fiction, we feature one of his books in each episode, discussing Burgess’s inspirations, his thematic interests, his literary techniques and more. In this episode, Graham Foster joins Andrew Biswell for the first of a two-part tour of Burgess’s life. In 1987, he published volume one of what he called his confessions, Little Wilson and Big God, in which he looks back on the first 42 years of his life, including his early life in Manchester, his experiences of war, and his time as a teacher in Colonial Malaya. Books mentioned in this episode By Anthony Burgess: The Malayan Trilogy (1956-59) The Eve of St Venus (1964) Beard’s Roman Women (1976) Ernest Hemingway and His World (1978) Flame into Being: The Life and Work of D.H. Lawrence (1985) By others: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (1916) Ulysses by James Joyce (1922) Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis (1954) Around the World in 80 Days by Michael Palin (1989) This page contains affiliate links which help support the charitable work of the Burgess Foundation. You can listen to Inside Anthony Burgess on your audio platform of choice […]
Inside Anthony Burgess is a podcast that explores the writing of the author of A Clockwork Orange. Taking in both his fiction and non-fiction, we feature one of his books in each episode, discussing Burgess’s inspirations, his thematic interests, his literary techniques and more. This first episode starts at the beginning with The Malayan Trilogy, […]
In this essay, originally published in the Spectator in March 1968, Anthony Burgess discusses the pros and cons of living with cats. ‘Dare to Be a Catman’ by Anthony Burgess Cats only came properly into my life when, after six years of soldiering and two years of postwar mess (known officially as readjustment), I got […]
A new selection of Burgess’s essays about music will be published on 25 January. Music surrounded Burgess throughout his early years in Manchester. He came from a family of musicians: his mother had been a music-hall singer, and his father played piano in pubs, music halls and silent cinemas. In his book about music and […]
Burgess wrote this foreword to The Wanting Seed in 1982. The novel has recently appeared in Bulgarian and French. A new English edition has just been published in the Penguin Essentials collection. The Wanting Seed appeared in the autumn of 1962, with A Clockwork Orange, my other piece of futfic or future-fiction, pairing it in […]
Peter Bakowski is Virtual Writer in Residence with the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, appointed for the Festival of Libraries (artwork pictured above) by Manchester Literature Festival and Manchester UNESCO City of Literature. He will be sharing some of his work later in the year. In the meantime, he reflects on his time with the Burgess […]
There seems to be a widespread assumption, often repeated on social media, that Anthony Burgess was a political conservative whose novels promote a right-wing agenda. Although Burgess sometimes claimed to take no interest in party politics, his position turns out to be a more complicated one than expected. Looking into his novels, autobiographical works and […]
Here at the Burgess Foundation, we are immersed in the world of Anthony Burgess. We revel in finding out small details about his life and career, we scour the archive for previously unknown facts and we have dedicated ourselves to bringing previously unpublished writing into print. We sometimes forget that, because of the sheer number […]
The second in our series of Dystopian Dialogues is a conversation with Nathan Waddell from the University of Birmingham about George Orwell, Anthony Burgess and dystopia. Burgess was strongly influenced by Orwell, and in his book 1985 he places Nineteen Eighty-Four in the context of a ravaged post-war Britain. He writes: ‘You saw the effects […]
In our latest article for the Inside The Archive blog series, we consider the extensive collection of poems by Anthony Burgess in the Manchester archive. Anthony Burgess never lost his early passion for poetry and continued to experiment and engage with this literary form throughout his career. In the new edition of Burgess’s Collected Poems […]