To celebrate the reopening of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation in Anthony Burgess’s home city of Manchester, here is Burgess’s article ‘I Am A Mancunian’, first published in the Manchester Evening News in December 1984. Telling Southerners that I am a Mancunian, I sometimes get the silly response ‘What did you say – a Manchurian?’ […]

Throughout his career, Anthony Burgess emphasised his status as a Mancunian who defined himself in opposition to the London literary establishment. In his biography of Shakespeare (1970), he draws parallels between himself and the playwright’s childhood and education away from the capital. Yet, like Shakespeare, Burgess was drawn to London from the provinces, and the […]