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. At first glance, Burgess’s 1961 novel One Hand Clapping seems very different to everything else he wrote. It is narrated by Janet Shirley, a northern housewife who lives in a council house with her husband Howard. When Howard wins big money on a quiz show their lives change forever, but their newfound wealth brings corruption as well as glamour. […]
To celebrate the reopening of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation in Manchester, we look at Burgess’s identity as a Mancunian. Anthony Burgess left Manchester in 1940 and returned frequently in later years. The city and its people appear many times in Burgess’s writing — Manchester accents, landmarks, and even smells pervade his literary work. Remembering […]
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 […]
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 Igor Stravinsky, Alban Berg, Arthur Honegger […]
In the late 70s Klett-Cotta acquired the German rights for several books by two British writers: Doris Lessing and Anthony Burgess. Having been in a close relationship with the publishers (as an editor and translator, mostly of non-literary material) I was given the choice between the two. Both were unknown to me; my interest in […]
A box for a dead body found in the Burgess Foundation collections. By Will Carr.