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 […]
Raymond Yiu is a composer who first discovered the work of Anthony Burgess in the 1990s when he picked up a copy of This Man and Music in a second-hand bookshop. This led to a fascination with Burgess’s writing and music, which eventually inspired Raymond to compose The World Was Once All Miracle, an orchestral […]
Anthony Burgess’s Earthly Powers is a book made up of other books. The Earthly Powers Bookshelf charts that literary map, using as its base Burgess’s library at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation. As the typescript of Earthly Powers approached the end of its decade-long gestation in 1979, there was a significant hole in the book. […]
Anthony Burgess’s Earthly Powers is a book made up of other books. The Earthly Powers Bookshelf charts that literary map, using as its base Burgess’s library at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation. The novel which exerted the strongest influence on Anthony Burgess’s literary work is undoubtedly Ulysses by James Joyce, which he first read as […]
We are very sad to learn that the composer, writer, scholar and educator Alan Shockley has died. A friend and supporter of the Anthony Burgess Foundation, Alan was a constant and convivial presence at the many conferences which took place in Liverpool, Manchester, Angers, Kuala Lumpur and in the United States. He was a brilliant […]
To celebrate the post-lockdown reopening of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, based in Anthony Burgess’s birth city of Manchester, we take a look at Burgess’s identity as a Mancunian. Anthony Burgess was born and educated in Manchester. His formative years in the city awakened in him a life-long love of literature, music, drama, and learning. […]
As Christine Lee Gengaro, editor of the new Irwell Edition of This Man and Music, points out, ‘The book might more accurately have been called This Man, Music, and Literature, or Music, Literature, and This Man. But as it stands, the title This Man and Music is misleading.’ Indeed it is, for less than a […]
When the atomic bomb destroyed the Japanese city of Hiroshima in August 1945, more than 140,000 people lost their lives, either in the blast itself or as a result of radiation sickness afterwards. This catastrophic event inaugurated a new era in world history and politics. From 1945 onwards, everyone would be living in the shadow […]
We look at the shorter pieces for piano written by Anthony Burgess, including the rather lively ‘Hornpipe’ Anthony Burgess’s ‘Hornpipe’ is an undated short piece for solo piano. Possibly part of an untitled set of six keyboard works, including three fugues, an air, and a passacaglia, its lively and simple melody is based on a […]
One of the most fascinating, yet underexplored, areas of the Burgess Foundation’s archive is its object collection. The collection consists of furniture, musical instruments, typewriters, crockery, glassware, awards, artwork, ornaments, and other collectibles that belonged to Burgess and his family and were gathered throughout their travels in Europe, Malaysia, and America. Many individual pieces are […]